RANDA JARRAR

I’m lucky enough to teach an Arab-American lit class at Fresno State– it’s officially an Arab-American Women’s Fiction class, but I also teach some poetry, comics, and non-fiction, too– and one of the assignments I gave my class was to think about what direction they think Arab-American literature seems to be going, and what direction they think it ought to go. Lots of students felt that it wasn’t their place, as White, Latino/a, or Asian-Americans, to tell Arab-American writers what to write about. But they wrote wonderful short essays anyway, asking Arab-American writers to write more Sci-Fi, less food porn, more literary fiction, less politically-centered narratives, more literature in general. There were lots of great responses, but I wanted to share this particular response from a young student.

A list of my hopes for Arab American literature by Neama Alamri

1. I hope that the future of Arab American writing will grow to include writers with ties in countries of the Gulf. In our course, we have had a limited representation of writers associated with the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.  And this is because these countries are marginalized in the genre of Arab American literature. There are not enough writers representing this region of the world and consequently, this region of the Middle East is the most misunderstood.

2. I hope that the Arab Muslim American hijabi (girl who wears a scarf) will have a narrative, a space for her voice. I hope that her hijab becomes just one aspect of her identity. And I hope she tells the world how it does not hinder her.

3. I hope that the Arab Muslim American girl can have a narrative where her self-fulfillment is not achieved by the abandonment, rebellion, or resistance of her faith, culture and parents. This leads me to number four.

4. I hope that the Arab American Baba will be a really cool guy. Sure, he’s strict. Sure, he doesn’t allow his daughter to date. But in the end, he really is lovable.

5. I hope that Arab Americans can save each other and there will no longer be the White savior.

6. I hope that Arab American text does not make feminism and Islam mutually exclusive.

7. I hope that Arab American female characters will be defined by something other than their sexuality.

8. I hope that Arab American characters find their culture as not just a burden but a blessing. Enough with the conflicted Arab American who must compromise himself. Let’s have whole characters, no more broken identities. No more origin issues! We are AMERICAN, DAMNIT!

9. I hope that Arab American literature can be in an American literature course. I hope that one day an Arab American writer could just be a writer, and not an Arab American writer.

10. I hope that one day I see myself in a story by an Arab American author.

I’ve been back from Turkey for a few weeks now, back in the very un-Turkish landscape of California’s Central Valley. Someone recently at a cocktail party asked me if Istanbul has been informing my writing- it hasn’t, yet, but it has informed my reading. Very much by accident, I picked up, upon my return to the States, a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and while reading it, noticed that Woolf knew the geography of Istanbul pretty well in sections where Orlando plays a role as an ambassador to that city. I did some lazy research and discovered that she had visited Istanbul in her twenties and had marveled at its “difference” from London.

To my pleasant surprise, the gender-switch that Orlando undergoes in the novel, from male to female, takes place in Istanbul. I loved this- and wished I’d known about it during the drag party my Istanbul residency gave me, for which all the attendants showed up in drag.

To my chagrin, Woolf, whom I’ve admired as a feminist voice and literary master, resorts in Orlando to orientalism and glorification of the “Eastern” other- see the perfect and wise tribe with whom the female manifestation of Orlando absconds in the nameless Turkish mountains. A bit of research later, I read, for the first time, about the Dreadnought Hoax for which Woolf, along with members of her Bloomsbury circle, dressed up as “Abissinians” — effectively, in brownface– and spoke gibberish and convinced the British Royal Navy to give them a tour of their prized ship (see the photo above).

The hoax triggered a memory for me, from 1989, when, as an eleven year old, I’d been dragged by my family on a cruise down the Nile from Cairo. We were the only Arabs on the ship, and one night, in Luxor, we were asked by the ship’s “art director” if we wanted to participate in a play about the Pharoah Hatshepsut– in keeping with my gender-flipping theme, Hatshepsut was the first female King of Egypt, and ruled for 22 years. My family, always eager to be seen as not-Arab, agreed. On the ship that night, I wore an ancient Egyptian headdress (a cheap, braided wig), kohled my eyes excessively, and wore a wide bangle. In other words, I was a child playing at womanhood; a brown child in brownface.

What do we do when a writer we admire wrongs us? Do we forgive her because she was a product of a time and a place? Do we criticize her? Do we write our own stories as a letter back to her? And what of the larger world, that, like the art director and his Western audience on that ship in Luxor, further others its others? And what of those of us who allow ourselves to be othered?

In Istanbul, I was shocked by my own loneliness. I spent the Summer surrounded by a language I did not understand. When people asked where I was from, I told them- California, by way of Texas, by way of Palestine and Egypt. I thought my Arabness would somehow ingratiate me, but it did not. I remained an outsider, living in a very male, industrial neighborhood, where I was almost exclusively the only woman walking down the street. For the first time in my life, I desired invisibility, or a cloak of maleness to get me by, at least until I reached more diverse and open neighborhoods.

In that sense, I wanted to be my own Orlando. And maybe, for those brief weeks, I was.

I’m taking a break from researching my new book/revising/being ogled by clueless old men and fatphobic women, to say: Hello! Check out how large the cats in Istanbul live:

Also, I went to the Hagia Sophia and saw, for the first time in my life, a stained glass window with Koranic phrases on it. And, there was a hella huge fresco of Mary and Baby Jesus. In a mosque. Trippy.

And, last, I have been going on quite a few foodventures. My favorite things so far include kumpir, baked potatoes stuffed with fries, and deep-fried-and-syrup-glazed donuts.

Back to the desk. Which, incidentally, sometimes looks like this.

They Might Be Giants – Istanbul (Not Constantinople) from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

I’m spending my Summer in Istanbul on a fellowship, at a writer’s residency. The residency is in a building where one of the owners gives circus-performance classes.

Needless to say, I’m very excited.

I’d like to spend the next few weeks reading, researching, writing. If I end up only spending time juggling and eating platefuls of baklava, I’ll come home satisfied.

I’m not sure precisely what drew me to Istanbul when I was looking into summer residencies. But I think its rich history, and the fact that it’s the only city that straddles two continents, might have had something to do with it.

I am off to Toronto for the Luminato festival, at which I’ll be presenting with other Beirut39 authors, including Joumana Haddad and Hyam Yared. I’m really looking forward to seeing those foxy, badass women again, and I’m excited to explore Toronto, which I’ve never visited.

If you’re in the area, stop by our panel at the Glenn Gould Studio on Sunday, at 1PM, and then head over to the Jane Mallet theater afterwards (at 4PM) to see the New Yorker panel with Mona El-Tahawy and Hisham Matar.

I’ve also arranged to do a reading at Beit Zatoun, a Palestinian arts space, with some of the wonderful women of Aqsazine. That event will be at 7PM on Saturday. Details here.

From my copy of Hitch-22, which Hitchens signed over wine (“For Randa & Russell, with infidel greetings”) in the green room at the Hay Festival in Wales last year, just weeks before he was diagnosed with cancer.

Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building– as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago– and lands on a bystander on the street below. Now make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional no, but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can’t, in other words, be “leap, leap, leap” for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration… In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. “Making the desert bloom” makes desert-dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the crusaders.

I was lucky enough to curate and guest-edit a special fiction issue from the fabulous Guernica Magazine, focusing on stories by Arab-Americans. The issue includes brand-new fiction by Diana Abu-Jaber, Alia Yunis, Laila Halaby, Patricia Sarrafian Ward, and Youmna Chlala. I hope you’ll read and enjoy the stories. Here is a snippet from my intro:

When I first went on the academic job market a few years ago, search committees asked what my dream class to teach would be. Arab-American Fiction, I said. They smiled, then invariably asked, “And which writers would you teach in that class?” I would enthusiastically share a list of names—Diana Abu-Jaber, Rabih Alameddine, Alicia Erian, Mohja Kahf, Patricia Sarrafian Ward, Laila Lalami, Leila Halaby—and, usually, none of the names registered. “Do you teach your own book?” some of them asked. I do not. But I do teach short stories by Grace Paley, ZZ Packer, Alice Munro, Nami Mun, Jane Bowles, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Toni Morrison (well, “Recitatif,” Morrison’s short story, and a damn good one). “Why,” some committees asked me, “do you teach American literature alongside Arab-American fiction?”

“Because,” I would answer, “Arab-American fiction is American literature.”

Which is why I wanted to put this issue together: to showcase some of contemporary American literature’s strongest voices, and spotlight the voices of newer, more up-and-coming authors. Here, one can see that certain themes—both grave and airy-light—preoccupy these writers: Palestine. Body image. War. Sex. Pizza.

Read the rest here.

Heading home in a short while, inspired and fully charged after days of reflection and conversation (and cocktails!) with Arab-American visual artists, poets, graphic novelists, academics, performers, musicians, DJs, editors. Sometimes I forget how much light we shine, and it’s such a warm surprise when I am reminded.

I’ve been so busy with classes this semester, I’ve rarely had any time to work on my novel’s 3rd draft, or to follow the news more closely. The world is falling apart at the seams, it seems. My heart is with the victims in Japan and Libya, and the people fighting hard in Wisconsin, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Morocco, Palestine. I am in complete awe of people’s bravery over the last few weeks.

Some writerly-type news:

I wrote a post for UTNE reader about my reactions to the Egyptian revolution.

I’ve just been given the title of Fiction Editor at The Normal School, a very gorgeous literary journal mostly run by editorial assistants from my MFA program here at Fresno State.

And I’m curating another editorial project, which I will talk more about next month.

Hope to see some of you next week at DIWAN! I’m excited for this mini-RAWI meeting of sorts. Click over to my events page for details on my specific panel there, and here for the forum’s complete schedule.

What happened to Lara Logan is tragic and I want to express my unequivocal disapproval of it. The Egyptians and Arabs I know are angry and disgusted with the perpetrators. I hope those men will be brought to justice.

Women in Egypt face daily sexual harassment and their legal rights are limited. When I was there in 2007 I swore I would never go back, just because of how fed up I was by the way men treated me on the street. I felt unsafe every moment I was in public. I hope Lara Logan’s case will help bring to light the work needed on the ground and in courthouses all across Egypt.

Let’s not forget that a group of Egyptian women rescued Lara Logan. I truly hope this doesn’t paint the entire revolution in a negative light. It ought not matter what the rapists’ cultural or religious background is, just as it ought not matter that Lara is blonde or femme. What happened to her was wrong, period.

Tahrir Square was seen by women for 18 days to be a kind of utopic environment where women had a voice and were not sexually harassed. A friend of mine in Cairo says there’s now a man down the street from her house who holds up a sign all day that reads: “Men: Do not harass the women of your country.” But unfortunately, revolution is not a light-switch. When Mubarak stepped down, it did not mean that rapists instantly disappeared from the streets or that respect for women was turned on as quickly as a song. This is a long process. I hope the women & activists of Egypt do the work to ensure that all of society there, including women, will be treated with dignity and respect.