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Layla Baalbaki: The Last Existential Feminist

Upon her passing, critics must reintroduce the late author, whose literary legacy was lost in the haze of time
 
Despite her reputation as one of the boldest Lebanese women writers at the peak of her career, Layla Baalbaki’s passing without much coverage on October 21, 2023, though delivering a shock throughout the Arab literary world, did not come as a surprise given the journalist and writer’s retreat from the spotlight since the 60s. Baalbaki was the first Lebanese woman tried in court for “outraging public decency” with her short story collection, “Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon” (1963). The late writer’s life has been shrouded in mystery since she departed from literary fiction, even more so after her death. As many recall the impact of her works, others speculate on her short-lived literary career in equal fervor: why did Layla Baalbaki stop writing? Did she leave behind any notes or a memoir about her life before her passing? Without the woman herself to confirm or deny, any answers remain mere speculation.

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Layla Baalbaki: The Last Existential Feminist

By Naomi Pham and Elie Chalala

Upon her passing, critics must reintroduce the late author, whose literary legacy was lost in the haze of time
 
Despite her reputation as one of the boldest Lebanese women writers at the peak of her career, Layla Baalbaki’s passing without much coverage on October 21, 2023, though delivering a shock throughout the Arab literary world, did not come as a surprise given the journalist and writer’s retreat from the spotlight since the 60s. Baalbaki was the first Lebanese woman tried in court for “outraging public decency” with her short story collection, “Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon” (1963). The late writer’s life has been shrouded in mystery since she departed from literary fiction, even more so after her death. As many recall the impact of her works, others speculate on her short-lived literary career in equal fervor: why did Layla Baalbaki stop writing? Did she leave behind any notes or a memoir about her life before her passing? Without the woman herself to confirm or deny, any answers remain mere speculation.
Essays and Features

Layla Baalbaki (1936-2023): Lebanese Writer Who Left a Revolutionary Storm in Modern Arab Feminist Novel at 22 Before Unexpected Adieu to Fiction Writing

By Abdo Wazen
 
After a long stay in London, Layla returned to Beirut in 2009  to sign her novels, “I Live” and “The Gods Deformed,” and her short story collection “Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon,” which had been republished by Dar al-Adab, at the Beirut Book Fair. Surrounded by her books, Layla seemed as if she was still preserving her old magic and charm. She was Beirut’s “star” novelist during the 60s, especially after “Spaceship of Tenderness” was banned in 1964 on charges of immorality. She was arrested, tried, and won the case.
Essays and Features

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

By Lynne Rogers

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.

Books

Second-Wave Arab American Literature Caught Between Assimilation and Diversity (3-4): Literary Legacy Which Descended into a Dormant Period Experienced a Revival in Late 1960s

By Naomi Pham

Scholarship on the Mahjar writers saturates much of the existing literature and discussion of Arab American literature, often alongside the contemporary writers of the third wave. By comparison, second-wave literature shares hardly a fraction of the attention between these two periods. From 1948 to 1973, second-wave writers occupied a surprisingly quiet and subdued presence despite the tumultuous developments occurring around them and in the Arab world.

Essays and Features

Lebanon Still Overshadowed by Oblivion As Port Blast Aftermath Enters Fourth Year

By Naomi Pham

Art has played an influential role in making sense of the loss felt after the August 4 explosion. Tom Young’s “Strong Angels” and other paintings show a human dimension of the tragedy and its civilian heroes, who “join forces to lift the city’s grief,” writes Darine Houmani of Diffah Three (The New Arab). “Despite all its devastation, the August 4 explosion brought greater impetus to preserve our heritage and brought about a database of our historical buildings that hadn’t been done before,” states Mona Hallak, an architect, heritage activist, and director of the American University of Beirut’s Neighborhood Initiative, as cited in The New Arab. Several weighed in on the rebuilding efforts, including Lebanese architect Jad Tabet, who proposed “rehabilitation” rather than “reconstruction,” focusing on preserving the city’s existing social fabric and inhabitants alongside the architecture (for further reading on Jad Tabet and architectural heritage, see Al Jadid, Vol. 4, No, 25, Fall 1998; Vol. 5, No. 26, Winter 1999; and Vol. 24, No. 79, 2020). As art historian and gallery owner Andrée Sfeir-Semler says, “You need to nourish people with art and culture because that is what feeds their souls.”

Essays and Features

Working through War: Women Tell Their Stories through the Arts

By 
Lynne Rogers
 
Women’s War Stories: The Lebanese Civil War, Women’s Labor, and the Creative Arts
Edited by Michelle Hartman and Malek Abisaab
Syracuse University Press, 2022
 
In “Women’s War Stories: The Lebanese Civil War, Women’s Labor, and the Creative Arts,” editors Michelle Hartman and Malek Abisaab curated six essays that begin to address the lack of scholarship on the role o

Escaping the Israeli Nightmare

By 
Pamela Nice


“At the time of this review, Israeli bombs are raining down on the civilians of Gaza, and the wounded and starving are dying by the thousands. It is more important than ever for us to know those people we have pretended don’t exist: the Palestinians. As horrendous as the Hamas attack was, Israel’s narrative attempts to “de-contextualize and de-historicize” it, as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has said, and to label October 7 as Israel’s 9/11 is yet another attempt to erase the Occupation. Focusing on the West Bank, Ramsey Hanhan’s “Fugitive Dreams” reminds us that the Occupation is as real as the Palestinians who have suffered under it.  

The Secret History: Reframing Arab American Origin Stories Through a Queer Lens

By 
Angele Ellis
 
Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling
By Charlotte Karem Albrecht
University of California Press, 2023
 
Charlotte Karem Albrecht begins her groundbreaking study with an Arab American family origin story that departs from the heteronormative narrative of intrepid immigrant peddlers achieving success and assimilating into white American s

New Book Examines ‘Solidarity Tourism’ in Palestine as the ‘Voice of the People’

By 
Lynne Rogers
 
Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine
By Jennifer Lynn Kelly
Duke University Press, 2023
 
In her book “Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tours across Occupied Palestine,” Jennifer Lynn Kelly explores an aspect of the recent phenomena of trauma/tragedy travel by focusing on the solidarity tours in Occupied Palestine.

Farewell to Habib Sadek (1931-2023): Friend, Poet, and Exceptionally Honest Politician

Having Self-Exiled from the Turbulent World of Lebanese Politics, Sadek Dies Peacefully at 92
By 
Elie Chalala

Rarely do I get personal in my notebooks and essays, but this time I will. On July 1, 2023, I lost a friend in Lebanon whom I had known for more than four decades, and even longer if I count the years before I met him in person in Los Angeles. Habib Sadek (1931-2023) was a Lebanese intellectual, poet, author, head of the Cultural Council of Southern Lebanon, former parliamentarian, and, more importantly, someone whose support deeply impacted the early years of Al Jadid Magazine, for which I will always be grateful.

Nazik al-Malaika: Queen of Free Verse Remains Uncertain

Fifty Years of Debate Yield No Consensus Over Her Place on the Throne of New Arabic Poetry
By 
Elie Chalala

Rarely do I open a cultural page in Arab newspapers, whether print or online, without catching wind of new discourse on modern poetry. Though I have never written poetry, the topic naturally draws my interest as an academic in political science, lecturing on debates between tradition and modernity for nearly a third of a century...Debates between traditional and new poetry shouldn’t be dismissed as simply Byzantine arguments. Such discourse indicates significant changes in the Arab world, including modernization and later globalization. Several critics have raised this discussion, the latest of which was in a column by Aref al-Saadi in Asharq Al Awsat, who writes, “I say this based on a slow study of our contemporary poetry and its trends, and I say it because it is the logical result of our willingness to read European literature and study the latest theories in philosophy, art, and psychology. In reality, those who want to combine modern culture with ancient traditions of poetry are like those living today in the clothes of the first century of immigration.” According to Saadi, there are two alternatives to discussing modernity and tradition: “Either we learn the theories, are influenced by them, and apply them, or we do not learn them at all. It may be useful for us to remember that the development in the arts and literature in a given era arises from the meeting of two or more nations.” Closed nations don’t produce anything new but merely repeat what their ancestors did.

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