"This anthology does readers an immense service by highlighting a little-understood and underrepresented part of the population in the United States."—Alpana Sharma, professor of English, Wright State University
"A very valuable reference tool representing a wide variety of contributors with different sensibilities and priorities. It brings together considerable talent, some well-established, some new voices, and offers a good balance of poetry and prose."—Samia Serageldin, author of Cairo House: A Novel
Description
The writers included here are descendants of multiple cultural heritages and reflect the perspectives of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds: Egyptian, Iranian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, Libyan, Palestinian, Syrian. They are from diverse socioeconomic classes and spiritual sensibilities: Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and atheist, among others. Yet, they coexist in this volume simply as American voices.
Atefat-Peckham gathered poetry and prose from sixteen accomplished writers whose works concern a variety of themes: from the familial cross-cultural misunderstandings and conflicts in the works of Iranian American writers Nahid Rachlin and Roger Sedarat to the mysticism of Khaled Mattawa’s poems; from the superstitions that govern characters in Diana Abu-Jaber’s prose to the devastating homesickness of Pauline Kaldas’s characters. Filled with emotion and keen observations, this collection showcases these writers’ vital contributions to contemporary American literature.
Table of Contents
Foreword, Lisa Suhair Majaj
Introduction
Voices from the Threshold: A Few Thoughts on Middle Eastern American Writing
Elmaz Abinader
Mothers and Daughters (nonfiction)
Preparing for Occupation (poetry)
Flying to Arabia (poetry)
Diana Abu-Jaber
Tainted Love (fiction)
Susan Atefat-Peckham
Marvari—The Pearl Tree (poetry)
Fariba’s Daughters (poetry)
Dates (poetry)
Them? (nonfiction)
Joseph Awad
from “A Novena for My Mother” (poetry)
Memories of Tiger Rag (poetry)
For My Irish Grandfather (poetry)
Windows (poetry)
Aunt Anna (poetry)
For My Lebanese Grandfather (poetry)
Christmas at Sithee’s (poetry)
Barbara Bedway
Death and Lebanon (fiction)
Why We Are in the DAR (fiction)
Turning Lebanese: A Family Story (nonfiction)
In Her Own Hand (nonfiction)
Joseph Geha
Where I’m From—Originally (nonfiction)
Stepping Out (fiction)
Samuel Hazo
Understory (poetry)
The First Sam Hazo at the Last (poetry)
Ahead of Time (poetry)
Joe Kadi
Writing as Resistance, Writing as Love (nonfiction)
Coiled Tongues (poetry)
Moving from Cultural Appropriation Toward
Ethical Cultural Connections (nonfiction)
Pauline Kaldas
Cumin and Coriander (fiction)
The Top (fiction)
Shifting Spaces: 1990–1993 (nonfiction)
Jack Marshall
Deal (poetry)
G–D (poetry)
Arabian Nights (poetry)
Khaled Mattawa
Selections from the Ibn Hazm Epistolary
D. H. Melhem
Preface for Walt Whitman (poetry)
28. [bright world in morning light . . . ] (poetry)
53. Hudson Continuum (poetry)
then/now, part one (poetry)
[Bookladen on Friday . . . ] (poetry)
[Charon drives his ambulance . . . ] (poetry)
[mother . . . ] (poetry)
Eugene P. Nassar
Summer 1958 (nonfiction prose poetry)
Summer 1964 (nonfiction prose poetry)
Naomi Shihab Nye
Yellow Glove (prose poetry)
Arabic (poetry)
Jerusalem (poetry)
Holy Land (poetry)
The Only Word a Tree Knows (poetry)
Renovation (nonfiction)
Amir & Anna (poetry)
Your Weight, at Birth (poetry)
Supple Cord (poetry)
The Only Democracy in the Middle East (poetry)
Because of Poems (poetry)
Nahid Rachlin
The Calling (fiction)
Roger Sedarat
My Mother’s 20 Persian Gold Bracelets (poetry)
San Antonio, 1979 (poetry)
Khomeini’s Beard (poetry)
Outing Iranians (poetry)
About the Author
Susan Atefat-Peckham (1970–2004) was assistant professor of English at Georgia College and State University. She wrote That Kind of Sleep and Black Eyed Bird, and her poems have appeared in several journals, including Borderlands, Texas Poetry Review, and the Literary Review.
June 2014