El Guindi Research Articles

Dispute in the Diaspora: Metaphor and Contradiction in Twenty-First-Century Arab American Family Dramas

Betty Shamieh’s Roar (2005) and Yussef El Guindi’s Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith (2009) exemplify early twenty-first-century Arab American family dramas that grapple with the intersecting dilemmas of Arab diasporic experience in the United States. Reading the family as a metaphor for the Arab diaspora, I argue that these plays serve as sites of contradiction and negotiation, exploring intra-communal conflicts that stem from differing relationships to homeland, host nation, and community. In this article, I contextualize Shamieh’s and El Guindi’s plays within the long history of Arab Americans navigating US racial frameworks, immigrant sentiment, and systemic bias. I further propose that these family dramas can be read as allegories of a diasporic public, Arab American or otherwise, that imagine ways of responding to the challenges of acculturation and survival in the diaspora.

The Immigrant Experience in Yussef El Guindi’s Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World

The Immigrant Experience in Yussef El Guindi’s Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World

The Pitfalls of Hybridity as Represented in Yussef El Guindi's Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith

The Pitfalls of Hybridity as Represented in Yussef El Guindi's Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith

Forms of Intersectionality: Drama and Metadrama in Yussef El Guindi's Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes

Forms of Intersectionality: Drama and Metadrama in Yussef El Guindi's Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes

Comment by Fadwa El Guindi on the review by E. N. Anderson of the book: Suckling: Kinship More Fluid, Fadwa El Guindi, Routledge Press

Comment by Fadwa El Guindi on the review by E. N. Anderson of the book: Suckling: Kinship More Fluid, Fadwa El Guindi, Routledge Press

Review of SUCKLING by Fadwa El Guindi

Review of SUCKLING by Fadwa El Guindi

The Identity Analysis of Yussef El Guindi’s Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith

The meaning of home differs from one person to another. America hosts many hybrid cultures and one of them is the Arab American identity. These people suffer from many hardships not only because of their religious differences, but also their traditional alienation to American culture. This paper will analyze the Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi’s play Ten Acrobats in An Amazing Leap of Faith (2018), presenting the fear and anxiety for the unknown culture in an Arab American family who struggle with identity problems and the American lifestyle. The concept of in-betweenness will be analyzed in each character and as Stuart Hall mentioned in his theory, this study will carry out “the eye of the needle of the other before it can construct itself” (1996, p. 89). As for identity framework, each character will be examined in terms of identity, gender and religious perspectives. The hardships of each character throws light on various commentaries in relating to the identity analyses and this study will explicitly show how the concept of identity will be shown with different Arab Americans. The cultural conflict is understood with Arab American identities that captivated the hegemonic Americanized thought system in America. While analyzing all characters in the play, this study will present how El Guindi reflects upon the lives of in-between Arab Americans with various issues such as religion, gender and race. While studying themes such as identity, religion, gender and race, the framework will be considered according to the theorists like Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Turning the world on its head: The virus that disrupted “business as usual”

Turning the world on its head: The virus that disrupted “business as usual”

The Political Impact of the September 11 Attacks as Represented in Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat

The Political Impact of the September 11 Attacks as Represented in Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat

Countering Post-9/11 Stereotypes: Arab American Playwrights Make Their Voices Heard

Before 9/11Arab-American drama was sporadic and inconsistent in the sense that there was a relative absence of Arab-American theater or playwrights who made their voices heard across the USA. However, after 9/11 the American theater scene witnessed a surge of Arab-American drama and theater that aimed at addressing the American audience in order to voice the concerns, fears and anxieties of Arab Americans. They wanted to dispel much of the stereotype attributes which have been wrongly associated with them because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This study intends to examine the dramatic endeavors of Arab-American playwrights to make their voices heard through drama, performance and theater in light of transnationalism and diaspora theory. The study argues that Arab-American dramatists and theater groups write back to the hegemonic polemics against Arabs and Muslims, which has madly become characteristic of contemporary American literature and media following 9/11. Viewed in light of the anti-Arab American literary discourse, Arab-American playwrights and performers have taken giant steps towards changing the stereotypes of Arabs, and countering the loud voices of those who try to add fuel to the blazing flames of Islamophobia. To assess the contribution of Arab-American dramatists and performers to make their voices heard loud and clear in countering the stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, Yussef El Guindi (1960-) is going to be discussed in this paper because he has been fighting the stereotypes of Arab Americans and Islamophobia in his drama and theater. El Guindi has devoted most of his plays to fight the stereotypes that are persistently attributed to Arabs and Muslims, and his drama presents issues relating to identity formation and what it means to be Arab American. A scrutiny of his plays shows that El Guindi has dealt with an assortment of topics and issues all relating to the stereotypes of Arab Americans and the Middle East. These issues include racial profiling and surveillance; stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the cinema and theater; and acculturation and clash of cultures. Keywords: Arab American, Identity, Theater, Stereotypes, Diaspora, Acculturation

The Forms and Meanings of (In)Visibility Arab-Americans and the State of Terror in Youssef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat and Language Rooms

This article investigates two well-known plays by Youssef El Guindi, the most important and prolific playwright of 21st century Arab-American theatre. Both plays are related to the consequences of the terrorist attacks on the Arab-American community, and they explore the structures of control enacted by the security state and the strategies of its repressive politics. The article focuses in particular on the tropes of visibility and invisibility and its paradoxes for a minority that moved from ‘invisible citizens’ to ‘visible subjects’ within a few hours. The paradoxes of visibility and invisibility and their divide are here explored in relation to three main issues: the relationship between ethnic identity and citizenship – be it social and/or political; deviancy and the construction of Otherness; and identity and the body.

Terrorists on Screen, Actors on Stage: Stereotyping Arabs and the Cinema Industry in Contemporary Arab-American Theatre

This essay investigates the relationship between the representation of Arab Americans, Arab-American cinema, and the cinema industry as a topic in contemporary theatre through the perspective of Arab-American stage performers and playwrights. As a response to the resurgence of stereotypes and the binary representation of the Good vs Bad Muslim in cinema and TV after 9/11, Arab-American playwrights have used the stage to counter-react to ignorance and prejudice by narrating the everyday struggles of Arab-American artists—and actors in particular—against the over-simplifications and requests of the blockbuster cinema industry. In particular the focus will be on two plays: Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes (2014) by Youssef El Guindi, and Browntown (2004) by Sam Younis. Both plays question mainstream culture and prejudices through humorous representations of the role of Arab-American artists within the cinema industry and their struggle for visibility beyond the terrorist mask.

The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi

The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi

Combating 9/11 Negative Images of Arabs in American Culture: A Study of Yussef El Guindi’s Drama

This study intends to examine the dramatic endeavours of Arab American playwrights to make their voices heard through drama, performance, and theatre in light of transnationalism and diaspora theory. The study argues that Arab American dramatists and theatre groups attempt to counter the hegemonic polemics against Arabs and Muslims, which have madly become characteristic of contemporary American literature and media following 9/11. In this context, this study examines Yussef El Guindi, an Egyptian-American, and his work. El Guindi has devoted most of his plays to fight the stereotypes that are persistently attributed to Arabs and Muslims, and his drama presents issues relating to identity formation and what this formation means to be Arab American. A scrutiny of these plays shows that El Guindi has dealt with an assortment of topics and issues all relating to the stereotypes of Arab Americans and the Middle East. These issues include racial profiling and surveillance, stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the cinema and theatre, and acculturation and clash of cultures.

"Because they are Muslim they must be doing wrong?" ‘Islamophobia’ in Yussef El Guindi's Language Rooms (2010)

"Because they are Muslim they must be doing wrong?" ‘Islamophobia’ in Yussef El Guindi's Language Rooms (2010)

Intermediality in Yussef El Guindi’s “Language Rooms” (2010)

In postmodern age, the Arab-American man is torn between two identities. He lives in a world of new modes of representation, in which advent of technologies and new realities in which the line between the original and copy cannot be drawn. The inauguration of technology together with the new American world he faces have led him to live a simulated life far different from his life in his homeland, leading to the fragmentation of his own identity. Yussef El Guindi is one of the prominent playwrights who traces issues of fragmentation, hybridity and assimilation, portraying them capsulated with technological and theatrical tools onstage. He is vocal in insisting to express the division and fragmentation of the self in his plays. This paper traces El Guindi’s philosophy of combining the real and the virtual, the self and the other, assimilation and hybridity creating an intermedial stage as expounded in his play “Language Rooms”.

The Traumatized as Traumatizer in Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat

Abstract Drawing on a psychoanalytic approach, the present paper tackles Yussef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat (2006) as a study of the American attitude towards Arab/Muslim Americans after the 9/11 attacks, with a special focus on the traumatic effects arising from police interrogations throughout the play. This will be done by employing such features as fear, verbal and physical attacks, inhuman practices, cynicism, scapegoating, etc. as negotiated by psychoanalysts like Allan Young, Philip Bonifacio, Marna Young and others. In a seven-character full-length one-act piece, El Guindi illustrates how the police officers, traumatized by the acute 9/11 attacks, pass on their own trauma to innocent people on fabricated evidence that they may appear as more sinned against than sinning. The paper has reached three findings. (1) The playwright fulfilled his target of showing the American traumatization of Arab/Muslim Americans as due to the West’s old view of the latter as inferior and uncivilized. (2) Trauma survivors (the police officers) usually have to pass their trauma on to their victims (by means of cynical inhuman practices). (3) The acute trauma changes into a chronic one due to passing it on to others. Keywords: 9/11 attacks, Arab/Muslim American, cynicism, fear, physical/verbal attack, scapegoating, psychological trauma, trauma survivors, violation

Mental Illness in Short Story and Drama: With Special Reference to Salwa Bakr and Yussef El Guindi

Mental Illness in Short Story and Drama: With Special Reference to Salwa Bakr and Yussef El Guindi

Enemies are nearby: The Violent Encounter among Arab Americans in Yussef El Guindi's Play Our Enemies

Abstract Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat is a play written by the Egyptian American playwright Yussef El Guindi. It handles many important themes such as identity formation of Arab Americans, the misrepresentation of Arab Americans in the American media and internal conflicts among them. The play illustrates how some Arab Americans are real enemies who involve each other in pranks, serious problems and who can even threaten each other's lives. They can intimidate each other and, according to the play, often-misrepresent themselves in the American media. The corrupt images and the harsh opinions spread by some Sheikhs, who speak on behalf of Muslims in the American media, are also portrayed in the play as leading to hatred among Arab Americans, especially Muslims. The negative image of Arab Americans in the American media is drawn in the play as perpetuated by the Muslims themselves. As a result, the American media conceptualizes Arab Americans especially Muslims as enemies to the United States of America. Homi Bhabha's two major concepts mimicry and ambivalence are applied in the analysis of the play. Keywords: Yussef El Guindi, mimicry, ambivalence, Homi Bhabha, Arab Americans, media, enemies, stereotyping ملخص تعالج أعداؤئنا: مشاهد حية من الحب و الخلاف - مسرحية للکاتب المصرى الأمريکي يوسف الجندي- العديد من الموضوعات الهامة مثل تشکيل هوية العرب الأمريکيين و تحريف صور العرب الأمريکيين فى وسائل الإعلام الأمريکية و الصراعات الداخلية بينهم. وتوضح المسرحية أن بعض العرب الأمريکيين أعداء حقيقييون لبعضهم البعض ونتيجة لهذا يورطون أنفسهم فى مشاکل خطيرة. فبعضهم يخيف الآخر ويحرف صوره فى وسائل الإعلام الأمريکية. وقد أدت الصور الفاسدة و الآراء القاسية التي ينشرها بعض الشيوخ إلى الکراهية ما بين العرب الأمريکيين خصوصا المسلمين, حيث يعتقد هؤلاء الشيوخ أن لديهم الحق فى تمثيل المسلمين في الإعلام والتحدث بالنيابة عنهم. وبناء على ذلک إنتشرت صورة سلبية للعرب الامريکيين في الإعلام الأمريکي, و وضع الإعلام الأمريکي تصورا خاطئا للعرب الأمريکيين خصوصا المسلمين کأعداء للولايات المتحدة الأمريکية. و تقوم الباحثة بتطبيق مفهومى هومى بابا الأساسيين المحاکاة و الإزدواجية فى تحليل المسرحية.

Post-9/11 Arab American Drama: Voices of Resistance in Back of the Throat and Browntown

This study examines the process of shattering stereotypical images of Arab- and Muslim-Americans after the 9/11 attacks in America in 2001 through drama as a form of expression for Arab-Americans and reflects on the development and forms of Arab-American theatre in the United States. It focuses on the works of Arab-American playwrights Yussef El Guindi and Sam Younis, who have served as representatives of the climactic epoch in Arab-American drama after gaining renown in the post-9/11 era. El Guindi’s works reveal how Arab- and Muslim-Americans are handed a guilty verdict easily in the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogation system, whereas Younis’s tackles the impact of Arab-American stereotypes perpetuated by Hollywood.