Arab American Women

Arab American Women
Author: Michael W. Suleiman
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2021-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815655134

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. Arab American women brought culture and absorbed culture; they brought relationships and created relationships; they brought skills and talents and developed skills and talents. They resisted inequities, refused compliance, and challenged representation. They engaged in politics, civil society, the arts, education, the market, and business. And they told their own stories. These histories, these genealogies, these narrations that are so much a part of the American experiment are chronicled in this volume, providing an indispensable resource for scholars and activists.

Arab and Arab American Feminisms

Arab and Arab American Feminisms
Author: Rabab Abdulhadi
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2011-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815651236

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 among Arab communities. 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 issues and 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; and among each other. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the restoration of Arab Jews to Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the country in which they live wages wars in the lands of their ancestors. Arab and Arab American Feminisms opens up new possibilities for placing grounded Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives at the center of gender studies, Middle East studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.

Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance

Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance
Author: Somaya Sami Sabry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2011-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857719742

The public image of Arabs in America has been radically affected by the 'war on terror'. But stereotypes of Arabs, manifested for instance in Orientalist representations of Sheherazade and the Arabian Nights in Hollywood, have prevailed for much longer. Here Somaya Sabry argues that the Arab-American experience has been powerfully shaped by racial discourse and Orientalism, and is further complicated today by hostility towards Arabs in post-9/11 America. She shows how Arab-American women writers and performers confront and subvert racial stereotypes in this charged context by recasting representations of Sheherazade. Shedding new light on Arab-American women's negotiations of identity, this book will be indispensable for all those interested in the Arab-American world, American ethnic studies and race, as well as diaspora studies, women's studies, literature, cultural studies and performance studies.

Culture, Class, and Work Among Arab-American Women

Culture, Class, and Work Among Arab-American Women
Author: Jen'nan Ghazal Read
Publisher: LFB Scholarly Publishing
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Drawing on US Census data and a national poll of ethnic groups to situate Arab-American women in a broader immigrant context, Read (sociology, U. of California-Irvine) expands the demographic profile and understanding of a group often viewed stereotypically. In this study of cultural and class influences on workforce participation as correlates of

Arab America

Arab America
Author: Nadine Naber
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012-08-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0814758886

Arab Americans are one of the most misunderstood segments of the U.S. population, especially after the events of 9/11. In Arab America, Nadine Naber tells the stories of second generation Arab American young adults living in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of whom are political activists engaged in two culturalist movements that draw on the conditions of diaspora, a Muslim global justice and a Leftist Arab movement. Writing from a transnational feminist perspective, Naber reveals the complex and at times contradictory cultural and political processes through which Arabness is forged in the contemporary United States, and explores the apparently intra-communal cultural concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality as the battleground on which Arab American young adults and the looming world of America all wrangle. As this struggle continues, these young adults reject Orientalist thought, producing counter-narratives that open up new possibilities for transcending the limitations of Orientalist, imperialist, and conventional nationalist articulations of self, possibilities that ground concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality in some of the most urgent issues of our times: immigration politics, racial justice struggles, and U.S. militarism and war. For more, check out the author-run Facebook page for Arab America.

Contemporary Arab American Women Writers

Contemporary Arab American Women Writers
Author: Amal Talaat Abdelrazek
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781934043714

This is a profound study of how contemporary Arab American women writers who have been marginalized and silenced, especially after 9/11, are pointing out the racism, oppression, and marginalization they experience in the United States and are beginning to uncover the particularities of their own ethnic histories. The book focuses mainly on four works by contemporary Arab American women writers: A Border Passage (1999) by Leila Ahmed, Emails from Scheherazad by Mohja Khaf, West of the Jordan (2003) by Laila Halaby, and Crescent (2003) by Diana Abu-Jaber, examining how each of these works uniquely tackles the idea of having a hyphenated identity--an identity that has been complicated by living in a hostile environment and living in a borderzone. In this book, the author articulately examines how Leila Ahmed, Mohja Khaf, Laila Halaby, and Diana Abu Jaber explore what it means to belong to a nation as it wages war in their Arab homelands, supports the elimination of Palestine, and racializes Arab men as terrorists and Arab women as oppressed victims, while investigating the themes of exile, doubleness, "split vision," and difference. Using postcolonial and feminist literary theories, the author insightfully investigates how these Arab American women writers critique intellectual tendencies that might be understood as making concessions to Western and Orientalist fundamentalist regimes and movements that in effect abandon Arab women to their iron rule.

Sajjilu Arab American

Sajjilu Arab American
Author: Louise Cainkar
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2022-08-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815655223

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 collection will be essential reading for scholars in Arab/SWANA American studies, Asian American studies, and race, ethnicity, and Indigenous studies, now and well into the future. Contributors include: Evelyn Alsultany, Carol W. N. Fadda, Hisham D. Aidi, Nadine Naber, Therí Pickens, Steven Salaita, Ella Shohat and Sarah M.A. Gualtieri.

Scheherazade's Legacy

Scheherazade's Legacy
Author: Susan M. Darraj
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2004-08-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

In a time when it seems that the gap of understanding between the West and the Middle East continues to widen, Scheherazade's Legacy builds a bridge between the two cultures. Collected here are the voices of those who define the genre of Arab Anglophone writing—that literature that describes the cultural experiences of those with Arab identities living, and often writing, in the West. Contributions from such writers as Naomi Shihab Nye, Diana Abu-Jaber, Suheir Hammad, Etal Adnan, Elmaz Abinader, and others, explore the complexities of writing in and for a culture not entirely their own. The essays here, complemented by selections, mostly original, of each author's work, promises to be a cornerstone in the study of writing by women writers of Arab descent who find themselves between two cultures, two worlds that are often at odds. With a foreword by Barbara Nimri Aziz, journalist, and founder of RAWI (Radius of Arab-American Writers), this collection is one of the first books to assemble the voices of women writers of Arab descent on the subject of writing itself. Contributors consider the difficulties, obstacles, joys, failures and successes of writing from an Arab perspective but largely for American audiences. They consider aspects of identity, family, politics, memory, and other crucial cultural issues that impact them personally and professionally as writers. In creative and thoughtful prose, these important women writers shed new light on what it means to be a writer in a world not fully your own.

Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11

Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11
Author: Amaney Jamal
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2008-02-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780815631774

Bringing the rich terrain of Arab American histories to bear on conceptualizations of race in the United States, this groundbreaking volume fills a critical gap in the field of U.S. racial and ethnic studies. The articles collected here highlight emergent discourses on the distinct ways that race matters to the study of Arab American histories and experiences and asks essential questions. What is the relationship between U.S. imperialism in Arab homelands and anti-Arab racism in the United States? In what ways have the axes of nation, religion, class, and gender intersected with Arab American racial formations? What is the significance of whiteness studies to Arab American studies? Transcending multiculturalist discourses that have simply added on the category “Arab-American” to the landscape of U.S. racial and ethnic studies after the attacks of September 11, 2001, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than as a beginning, in Arab Americans’

Our Women on the Ground

Our Women on the Ground
Author: Zahra Hankir
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0143133411

Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it’s like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection, with a foreword by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour “A stirring, provocative and well-made new anthology . . . that rewrites the hoary rules of the foreign correspondent playbook, deactivating the old clichés.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat—female journalists—are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war. From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are unique—as are their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on Whatsapp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers. In Our Women on the Ground, nineteen of these women tell us, in their own words, about what it’s like to report on conflicts that (quite literally) hit close to home. Their daring and heartfelt stories, told here for the first time, shatter stereotypes about the region’s women and provide an urgently needed perspective on a part of the world that is frequently misunderstood. INCLUDING ESSAYS BY: Donna Abu-Nasr, Aida Alami, Hannah Allam, Jane Arraf, Lina Attalah, Nada Bakri, Shamael Elnoor, Zaina Erhaim, Asmaa al-Ghoul, Hind Hassan, Eman Helal, Zeina Karam, Roula Khalaf, Nour Malas, Hwaida Saad, Amira Al-Sharif, Heba Shibani, Lina Sinjab, and Natacha Yazbeck