RANDA JARRAR

I wanted to stop today and declare that lately, I’ve been feeling beautiful. I know this is super-vain and super-navel-gazy, but I don’t give a shit. I feel fucking beautiful, y’all! And to me, this feeling is a kind of revolution.

For years, I was told that because I am not thin, I am not allowed to feel or be beautiful. Well, that’s strange, because I feel and am beautiful right now, everyday.

This is a feeling I am extra-proud of since, also lately- no, my whole life- I have seen movies, magazine covers, TV shows, and articles that declare that I ought not to feel beautiful- or healthy, because of my size.

I am fat- really fat, and in the past year, I have become more and more in love with my fat. I love my body rolls. I love my double-chin. I love my flappy arms. I love my stretch marks.

For years I hated trying clothes on, but now I love going to F21 or anywhere else and trying on whatever the hell I damn please. And, because I am gainfully employed, I can buy whatever outfit I damn please. I wear whatever I want– red lipstick and tight clothes if I want to. Sexy & flamboyant clothing is not limited to certain types of bodies.

I’ve gotten lots of help from the internet. Blogs and tumblrs have really helped make me feel beautiful. Here are some links to fat-positive sites that I love and look at everyday: Hey Fat Chick!; Tangled Up in Lace; Queer Fat Femme; Fatshionista: an outfit blog; and last but not least (and NSFW) Adipositivity.

The best messages I’ve heard, the ones I keep repeating to myself, are:  No one is allowed to care about my health except me. If you are “healthy” it does not make you a good person. I don’t expose myself to people or things that will make me feel shitty about myself. There’s an oldie but goodie list of inspirations here. And if you’re a hater, or are tired of people saying stupid fat-phobic shit in front of you, this list is GOLD.

I’m fat, I’m Arab-American, and I ought to feel invisible and not worthwhile. And yet I feel so very visible and so very gorgeous.

Reader, you deserve to feel beautiful, just the way you are. So strut your hot stuff: you are a worthwhile and beautiful person, and that, in itself, is a kind of revolution.

Happy New Year, everyone! I’ve got some exciting news:

While a novelist’s work is never done, this is a draft I’m very pleased with. I’m not sharing yet any details about the novel itself, only that it’s about a young single mom and her magical son.

Here are some of the ways I finished this draft in 2010:

I set deadlines for myself. These were completely artificial, but I told myself I had to follow them.

I showed the first draft to three people I trust very much, and I sat with their suggestions for weeks, trying to figure out how best to revise.

I didn’t have a job for seven months– and I didn’t want one. I was on unemployment for part of the year, and later, I had some part-time work, but I didn’t teach or do anything similarly related to writing (outside the book) during those months. I was broke in a town I loved- Austin- and I didn’t get to partake of the city’s offerings as much as I would’ve liked, but I told myself that this was for the good of my novel.

I wrote or revised every single day.

When I moved, I took a short break, but once I got settled into my new job, I revised three days a week. During breaks- in November, and this current Winter break- I revised every single day, for as many hours as I needed to.

I tried new things, and ruthlessly chopped sections that I liked but which did nothing to really serve the novel’s themes, characters, or plot.

And finally, I have the best husband in the universe who kept me sane, inspired, and happy.

I still don’t know what’s going to happen with the manuscript, only that after over 2 years, I’ve got something I’m happy with. And it feels good.

Some of you have been so supportive and wonderful, and I thank you. I hope this new year will be good to each and every one of you.

I’m sure these will change over time, but here they are:

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Tie ( I know, cheating): Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges and Disgrace, JM Coetzee
The Passion, Jeannete Winterson
Saints and Strangers, Angela Carter
The Quick and the Dead, Joy Williams

What are your top-five all-time favorites?

I’ve left Facebook. My phone’s ringtone no longer functions, for some reason (and I don’t want to fix it or buy a new one, yet). I have no idea what my office’s extension number is (and want to keep it that way). I’ve always been open, have always craved hearing other people’s voices, and used to love spending hours on the phone with friends who even lived in the same town as I did. Now, many of my friends are 180 miles away (with the majority of them at least 1100 miles east) and yet, I’m having a hard time staying in touch. Where did this reclusive impulse come from?

In the years I was writing A Map of Home, I had dial-up. Even when I wasn’t online, I never unplugged the phone-line from my PC. No one could ever reach me, and they complained. There was no Facebook back then, but there was Friendster, and I stayed away from joining until I finished a substantial revision of the book.

As I revise my new novel and teach, it’s slowly beginning to make sense: I am in hiding. Those precious few hours I’m not correcting someone else’s manuscript, I am confronted with the following choices:

1. Revise my book?

2. Comment on a friend’s Facebook note?

3. Pick up or return calls?

4. Blog?

It’s so lonely, but I’ve chosen to go with 1. Writing a second book has been grueling, but in a very tricky way. It doesn’t feel as painful or difficult as the first book, in a way, but it is. I’ve just tricked myself into thinking it’s been easier. But all the same instincts are there: I reflect, I work, and I hide. It’s the only way I know to finish a book.

Writers such as Hayan Charara, Sinan Antoon, Nathalie Handal, and myself answer the question, “What is distinctive about Arab-American writing today?” Some of my favorite quotes:

“It’s not easy being a barbarian in Rome. The Romans rarely listen, but the barbarian has to keep it real.” – Sinan Antoon

“Arab American poetry is and has been aesthetically as varied as any other American poetry, but that discussion still takes a backseat (in a minibus) today.” – Fady Joudah

“[W]e have formed quasi-familial bonds and carried on critical and creative conversations in ways that echo the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts, and other key moments in ethnic-American writing.” – Phil Metres

“We’re doing our best to help people out of the identity trap–to stop looking at us, and to look at our words.” – Hayan Charara

“[Our writing] has developed the confidence to be American–and this is important–to be American without having to apologize or explain itself.” – Laila Halaby

Anti-Mosque Protesters are pointing rented missiles at the site of the NYC mosque. An Amazing book about Arab-Americans is being protested by right-wing racists. And Arab-Americans are making movies, writing books, raising families, and playing football. Dumbass bigots of America: You can’t erase us.

1600 miles and many rest stops later, I’ve moved to California’s central valley. I’ve just joined the English Department and MFA program at CSU Fresno and I’m so excited to begin teaching creative writing again.

Of all the things I hope to teach/drill into my students, revision will probably top the list.  I’ve been revising my new novel since January and, just as it was with the 1st novel, revision is probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do. Machete-ing darlings left and right, re-routing the protagonist, playing with chronology, introducing new characters better, deepening their relationships to each other, and saving all my good ideas for the novel, not this blog- wink, wink.