Arab American Heritage: Readings & Resources

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In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles. Contributors hail from multiple geographical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist commitments and ambiguities and to highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the place of Arab Jews in Arab and Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the countries in which they live wage wars in the lands of their ancestors. This work opens up new possibilities for placing grounded perspectives at the center of gender, Middle East, American, and ethnic studies."

"Leila Ahmed recounts her childhood in Egypt and her journey as a feminist in America. Set against the backdrop of Egypt’s political and social transformations, she reflects on her complex identity as a Muslim woman navigating cultural change. This memoir offers a poignant look at personal and national evolution, updated with an afterword on the Arab Spring."

"Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks. In Possible Histories, Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race."

"One of Donald Trump's first actions as President was to sign an executive order to limit Muslim immigration to the United States, a step toward the "complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" he had campaigned on. This extraordinary act of Islamophobia provoked unprecedented opposition: Hollywood movies and mainstream television shows began to feature more Muslim characters in contexts other than terrorism; universities and private businesses included Muslims in their diversity initiatives; and the criminal justice system took hate crimes against Muslims more seriously. Yet Broken argues that, even amid this challenge to institutionalized Islamophobia, diversity initiatives fail on their promise by only focusing on crisis moments.Evelyn Alsultany argues that Muslims get included through "crisis diversity," where high-profile Islamophobic incidents are urgently responded to and then ignored until the next crisis."

"Moustafa Bayoumi reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans, highlighting the profound effect this surveillance has had on how they live their lives. To be a Muslim American today often means to exist in an absurd space between exotic and dangerous, victim and villain, simply because of the assumptions people carry about you. In gripping essays, Bayoumi exposes how contemporary politics, movies, novels, media experts and more have together produced a culture of fear and suspicion that not only willfully forgets the Muslim-American past, but also threatens all of our civil liberties in the present."

"In the aftermath of 9/11, many Arab and Muslim Americans came under intense scrutiny by federal and local authorities, as well as their own neighbors, on the chance that they might know, support, or actually be terrorists. As Louise Cainkar observes, even U.S.-born Arabs and Muslims were portrayed as outsiders, an image that was amplified in the months after the attacks. She argues that 9/11 did not create anti-Arab and anti-Muslim suspicion; rather, their socially constructed images and social and political exclusion long before these attacks created an environment in which misunderstanding and hostility could thrive and the government could defend its use of profiling. Combining analysis and ethnography, Homeland Insecurity provides an intimate view of what it means to be an Arab or a Muslim in a country set on edge by the worst terrorist attack in its history."

"Both a summative description of the field and an exploration of new directions, this multidisciplinary reader addresses issues central to the fields of Arab American, US Muslim, and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) American studies. Taking a broad conception of the Americas, this collection simultaneously registers and critically reflects upon major themes in the field, including diaspora, migration, empire, race and racialization, securitization, and global South solidarity."

"The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant community at its very heart. Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them."

"A memoir about restoring the health of our people, and our democracy, from a physician and “one of the brightest young stars” of the progressive movement."

"[A] graphic memoir that explores the complexities of identity and belonging as the daughter of Filipino and Egyptian immigrants. Through vivid illustrations, Gharib reflects on her childhood experiences of balancing cultural traditions with the desire to fit into American society. The memoir is a poignant and humorous look at the immigrant experience, showcasing the tension between honoring one’s heritage and adapting to a new world."

"Los Angeles is home to the largest population of people of Middle Eastern origin and descent in the United States. Since the late nineteenth century, Syrian and Lebanese migration, in particular, to Southern California has been intimately connected to and through Latin America. Arab Routes uncovers the stories of this Syrian American community, one both Arabized and Latinized, to reveal important cross-border and multiethnic solidarities in Syrian California."

"Using a theoretical framework located at the intersection of US ethnic studies, transnational studies, and postcolonial studies, 'Articulations of Resistance: Transformative Practices in Arab-American Poetry' maps an interdisciplinary model of critical inquiry to demonstrate the intimate link and multilayered connections between poetry and resistance. In this study of contemporary Arab-American poetry, Sirène Harb analyzes how resistance, defined as the force challenging the dominant, intervenes in ways of rethinking the local and the global vis-à-vis traditional paradigms of time, space, language and value."

"[E]xplores the rise of Detroits earliest Muslim communities. It documents the culture wars and doctrinal debates that ensued as these populations confronted Muslim newcomers who did not understand their manner of worship or the American identities they had created. Looking closely at this historical encounter, Old Islam in Detroit provides a new interpretation of the possibilities and limits of Muslim incorporation in American life. It shows how Islam has become American in the past and how the anxieties many new Muslim Americans and non-Muslims feel about the place of Islam in American society today are not inevitable, but are part of a dynamic process of political and religious change that is still unfolding."

"Retells a number of significant events in U.S. history, through the eyes of the nation's large and growing community of Arab Americans."

"[C]ollection of essays exploring [the author's] deep connection to Los Angeles and the struggles of identity, loss, and belonging. Returning to his hometown, Orfalea reflects on the changing city, his Arab American roots, and personal tragedies that shaped his life. With vivid storytelling and searing insight, he captures the complexities of being an Angeleno and what it means to stay human in an ever-changing world."

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In this history of Arab American activism in the 1960s, Pamela Pennock brings to the forefront one of the most overlooked minority groups in the history of American social movements. Focussing on the ideas and strategies of key Arab American organisations and examining the emerging alliances between Arab American and other anti-imperialist and antiracist movements, Pennock sheds new light on the role of Arab Americans in the social change of the era."

"[A] poignant memoir of identity and displacement, tracing Said’s childhood across Jerusalem, Cairo, and Lebanon. Caught between cultures—Arab yet Christian, Palestinian yet American—Said reflects on his formative years under a strict father and a loving but ambivalent mother. With deep introspection, he captures the loss of a world that no longer exists and the lifelong search for belonging."

"Arab American women have played an essential role in shaping their homes, their communities, and their country for centuries. Their contributions, often marginalized academically and culturally, are receiving long-overdue attention with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Arab American women's studies. The collected essays in this volume capture the history and significance of Arab American women, addressing issues of migration, transformation, and reformation as these women invented occupations, politics, philosophies, scholarship, literature, arts, and, ultimately, themselves."

"Thirty-nine-year-old Sirine, never married, lives with a devoted uncle and an adoring dog named King Babar in the Persian- and Arab-American community of Los Angeles known as Irangeles. She works as a chef in a Lebanese restaurant, her passions aroused only by cooking--until an unbearably handsome Arabic literature professor starts dropping by for a little home cooking."

"Amani is hooked on a mystery -- a poem on airmail paper that slips out of one of her father's books. It seems to have been written by her grandmother, a refugee who arrived in Jordan during the First World War. Soon the perfect occasion to investigate arises: her Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King of Jordan, invites her father to celebrate the king's sixtieth birthday -- and to fence with the king, as in their youth. Her father has avoided returning to his homeland for decades, but Amani persuades him to come with her. Uncle Hafez will make their time in Jordan complicated -- and dangerous -- after Amani discovers a missing relative and is launched into a journey of loss, history, and, eventually, a fight for her own life."

"As a blizzard blankets the northeast United States, burying residents and shutting down airports, the Zaydan family eagerly awaits the arrival of Eva, a cousin visiting from Lebanon after a long separation from the family. Over the course of one day, while Eva is stranded in New York City, Chehade's nuanced story unfolds in the reminiscences and anxieties of each family member."

"[A] beautifully woven collection of stories following four Arab American women—Hanan, Nadia, Reema, and Aliyah—as they navigate the cultural divide between their Palestinian heritage and their lives in South Philadelphia. Through their struggles and triumphs, as well as the perspectives of their mothers, the collection explores identity, generational conflict, and the search for belonging."

"Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates her story from her childhood in Kuwait, her early teenage years in Egypt (to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion), to her family's last flight to Texas."

"[R]eimagines the ill-fated 1527 Narváez expedition through the eyes of Mustafa al-Zamori, a Moroccan slave and one of its four survivors. As he and his companions traverse an unfamiliar land, their harrowing journey reshapes them, challenging notions of conquest, survival, and identity. Blending historical fact with fiction, Lalami offers a powerful and humanizing retelling of America’s early exploration from a rarely heard perspective."

"[A]uthor Lena Mahmoud deftly juggles two storylines, alternating between Isra’s youth and her current life as a married twentysomething who is torn between cultures and trying to define herself. The chapters chronicle various moments in Isra’s narrative, including her parents volatile relationship and the trials and joys of forging a partnership with Yusef. Mahmoud also examines Isra’s first visit to Palestine, the effects of sexism, how language affects identity, and what it means to have a love that overcomes unbearable pain."

"Evelyn C. Shakir paints tales that are rich in history and background. She sets her stories in different eras, from the 1960s to the present, peopled with Lebanese women of different ages, sometimes writing letters, often reminiscing, looking back as far as the turn of the century. In different ways, these first and second-generation women struggle with feminist issues overshadowed by the demands of dual cultures."

"Kamala Khan, a Pakistani American girl from Jersey City who lives a conservative Muslim lifestyle with her family, suddenly acquires superhuman powers and, despite the pressures of school and home, tries to use her abilities to help her community."