With Cutting-Edge Scholarship, New Reader ‘Sajjilu’ Challenges Traditional, Homogenous Archive Representations of Arab American Studies

As part of their Critical Arab American Studies, Syracuse University’s “Sajjilu Arab American: A Reader in SWANA Studies” celebrates the emerging field of Arab American, Southwest Asian, and North African Studies not by “canonization but rather by inquiry and exploration.” This collection of 39 essays offers a comprehensive and scholarly introduction to the field and highlights the interdisciplinary anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and feminist perspectives of this growing and innovative field. The varied collection also includes excerpts from early seminal works, many of which have been reviewed in this journal upon their publication, to provide the reader with the foundation of Arab American studies, followed by excerpts of contemporary cutting-edge scholarship informed by activism and committed research. The title “Sajjilu” refers to Mahmoud Darwish’s 1964 poem “Identity Card” (Bitaqat Hawiyyah), composed while in an Israeli prison, which begins with ‘sajjil ana arabi.’ Using the verb's imperative, the opening lines mean “Register: I am an Arab.” While the scholars examine the historical moments of the Arab American narrative, including early Arab misogyny, the Occupation of Palestine, the attack of 9/11 and its repercussions, and the American war in Iraq, the collection acknowledges the complexity of and diversity under the umbrella of Arab American identity. It dismantles “the historical archive that privileges assimilation and heteronormative narratives.” Admirably, the academic rigor does not come at the expense of the personal. In the introduction, each editor begins with a personal statement that chronicles their introductory awareness of being an Arab/Arab American and their trajectory in the field. In “Pauline’s Story,” she gratefully acknowledges the influence of this journal, Al Jadid, and her participation in Al Jadid’s efforts to share the cultural pulse of the Arab American community.
 

As a post-colonial artifact, the editors have grouped the essays into six sections to disrupt the restrictions of a linear narrative and instead immerse the reader in a realm of intellectual freedom and transnationality. Part One appropriately addresses “Arab American Legibility and the Question of Naming” with both classic seminal essays, from the recent staples of Joe Kadi’s “Food for Our Grandmothers” and Michelle Hartman’s essay “Grandmothers, Grape Leaves, and Kahlil Gibran” to more contemporary essays that broaden the constraints of a blanket Arab American identity. The section that resists invisibility and inequality reaches out to the Arab community in Latin America, Black Americans, the LGBT community, and the disabled community. Any ethnic scholar, particularly novices, will appreciate each essay's road map and in-depth bibliography. The second section, “Structuring Migration, Moving Bodies, and Shared Histories,” disrupts the emigration/immigration binary and proposes a fluid migration “shaped not only by the conditions of ‘origin’ and destination but also by the circuits of movement precipitated by global capitalism, settler colonialism, climate change, environmental destruction, and imperialism as well as by corruption and political and social repression.” This section addresses the politics of racial purity with Syrian/Lebanese immigrants’ association with a Caucasian Christian identity to the international Arab Gaucho in Argentina. The final three essays in this section move to the post-9/11 problematics of identity and the cultural response of Arab writers and filmmakers. Throughout the collection, solidarity with Palestine remains a defining issue. 
 

Part Three, “Race, Religion, and the Discourse of Multiculturalism,” continues to open the complexities of Arab American identity, discussing race as a social construction, Islamophobia with hope, and a hard look at the manipulation of cultural expression. In his essay, “Ethnic Identity and Imperative Patriotism, Arab Americans Before and After 9/11,” Steven Salaita hopes we can transform “the American way of life” into “American ways of life.” In “The Limits of Muslim Cool,” Su’ad Abdul Khabeer calls out the State Department’s “hip hop diplomacy” that subsequently incorporates a voice of dissent into a symbol of liberal inclusion.   Part Four, “Orientalism and Arab Americans, Troubling Ways of Knowing,” asks how Arab Americans and Arab America have been imagined, represented, and understood. How have Arab Americans subverted, reformulated, contested, or exploited these discourses about them in response to changing cultural restraints and political pressures? The topics in this section range from the food at the Church festivals to female comedians and “Arab bodies in Gay Bars” after the Pulse shootings in Florida. Evelyn Alsultany’s post-9/11 essay demonstrates America’s legitimization of torture through television, reinforcing the good/evil Muslim dichotomy. In “Introduction to American Arabesque,” Jacob Rama Berman contextualizes the Marine hymn “from the hills of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” The essays testify to the burgeoning of contemporary Arab American pop culture and literature. Pauline Homsi Vinson’s essay traces some of how contemporary Arab American writers evoke the lifesaving potential of storytelling enacted in “One Thousand and One Nights” and “argues that such evocations present critical interventions in how we understand Arab American history and Arab American literary aesthetics.” Again, the Arab transnational essays discover both new perceptions of migratory Arabs as well as similarities with other oppressed minorities. 
 

Part Five, “Security/Insecurity, Empire and the War on Terror,” extends the themes of the previous sections into the current political climate hidden behind the rhetoric of “soft power humanitarian efforts” and the “benevolent supremacy” of the imperialist savior narrative. Louise Cainkar’s essay “Whose Homeland Security” discloses some appalling statistics on the government’s post-9/11 behavior. She cites that “after eighty thousand domestic special registrations, five thousand preventive detentions and tens of thousands of FBI interviews,” not “a single person was convicted of a terrorist crime.” Bayomi’s essay “Introduction to this Muslim American life” reinforces the fear instilled by those under surveillance and the resistance to “the war on terror culture,” and Keith P. Feldman reflects on the post-Guantanamo response. Danielle Haque’s essay “Water Occupation and the Ecology of Arab American Literature” connects the water concerns of the Palestinians with those of the Standing Rock Sioux. In “Borders are Obsolete: Relations Beyond Borderlands of Palestine and U.S.-Mexico,” Leslie Quintanilla and Jennifer Mogannam describe a grassroots movement of convergences rather than ruptures.
 

In an innovative twist, Part Six, “Solidarities and Sites of Resistance, Theorizing Borders,” closes this reader with a progressive opening to the global community rather than closing the field of Arab American studies into an erudite and isolated field of research. This section returns to the shared concerns of the Arab American community and also highlights the myriad of identities within that community, including the Hispanic-Muslim community. The first two essays, “Arab American Feminism, Historical Convergence and Transnational Solidarities” and “Transnational Alliances: the AAUG’s Advocacy for Palestine and the Third World,” note feminist and Arab American’s efforts to bring attention to the occupation of Palestine, connecting with activists such as Angela Davis. Robin D.G. Kelley recounts a delegation of Black Activists who visited Gaza and their shared vision of liberation. Dana M. Olwan records the connection between Palestinians and the Native American struggle against the North Dakota pipeline and the shared ecological preservation efforts. In the final essay, Sunaina Maira re-examines the American response to the transnational digital activists and subsequent hacktivists' involvement with Tahrir Square and the American media response, suggesting how rich the field is for future studies and efforts.  

This essay collection's interdisciplinary and transnational nature fulfills the editors’ goal of promoting discussion and further inquiry. Both the structure of the reader and its content make a valuable contribution to scholars interested in an expansive scholarship that celebrates the overlapping of specific issues with activism. Supported by their valuable cited works, selecting the historical early essays on Arab American studies alongside the more recent essays and topics gives readers an inclusive overview of the field’s foundation and paves the road for future scholarship. “Sajjilu Arab American: A Reader in SWANA Studies” sings with the richness and diversity of this relatively recent field of study.

 

 

 

 

 

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