Can the Sea Change of Emigration Sweep Away the Nation-State? Lebanon Transforming Under Third Wave of Mass Emigration!

By Elie Chalala
Lebanon's problems are too many to list, much less analyze their causes and remedies. With hardly any sector left intact, even the army and security forces, which are considered the last hope, now depend on charitable donations from regional and international donors. But Lebanon's crises go beyond the immediate needs of health care and education. They touch the very pillars that hold the nation together.
 
Essays and Features

Arabic in the Digital Age: As Technologies Merge and the Digital Revolution Progresses, Arabic Digital Presence Lags Behind

By Naomi Pham

Sawsan al-Abtah’s recent article in Asharq al-Awsat exposed the lackluster presence of Arabic on the internet today. This topic is hardly a new one: since the early 2010s, discussions on the broader use of Arabic online and how to streamline Arabic use of the web brought concerns about the language’s underrepresentation in the digital world. Then the outbreak of the Arab Spring led to a larger Arab userbase, with increased citizen journalism, organized activism, and the availability of platforms allowing more freedom of speech and expression. With an abundance of Arabic-speaking users, one would expect Arabic content to develop naturally. On the contrary — al-Abtah points out that Arabic content has been and continues to be overshadowed by content in other languages. Today, we have become more conscious of its shortcomings amid a global pandemic that has pushed large portions of work, education, and social life online, with very few Arabic language resources available.

Essays and Features

Lamia Abbas Amara (1929-2021): Pillar of Iraqi Poetry, Famed for Tenderness, Seductiveness, and Assertiveness

By Elie Chalala

Lamia Abbas Amara rose to prominence among a group of poets who ushered in the free verse movement in Arabic poetry. She was not only a major cultural figure and freethinker, but also a pillar of contemporary poetry in Iraq alongside great poets like Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Nazik al-Malaika. After years in exile, the poet died at 92 in a California hospital due to illness. In the words of Farouk Youssef of al-Arab newspaper, Lamia is best known for her “poetic tenderness, female seduction, and strong presence on stage,” becoming an important icon of Iraqi poetry.

Essays and Features

On Translated Arabic Books: Novelist Hoda Barakat’s ‘Voices of the Lost’ Catches a Glimpse of the World Refugee Crisis

By Naomi Pham

Millions of people risk life and limb to escape their countries through the sea and other means as a global refugee crisis unfolds. The 2019 winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Hoda Barakat’s “Voices of the Lost” (Yale University Press, 2021), recently translated from Arabic into English by Marilyn Booth, paints a complex picture of displacement, war, and hope in the bleakest moments among immigrants and refugees.

Books

Revisiting Youssef al-Sayigh: Poet of Sorrows and Master of Contradictions

By Naomi Pham

Iraqi poet Youssef al-Sayigh is one of the many poets who lived and died as a stranger, regardless of his important contributions, which were mostly neglected until after his death in Damascus on December 12, 2005. Al-Sayigh led a life riddled with contradiction, abandoned by his peers, friends, and his government, effectively forced out of the public cultural scene. A poet, novelist, playwright, essayist and painter, he lived a life filled with political and personal tragedy. He was a contemporary of Saadi Yusuf, Abdul Razzaq Abdul Wahed, Musa al-Naqdi and others. This generation followed Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Nazik al-Malaika and Abdul-Wahhab al-Bayati, the founders of the free verse movement of modern Iraqi poetry. Although al-Sayigh’s biography was published post-humously in Egypt in 2005 by his friend Atheer Muhammad Shehab through Dar al Shorouk, much of the poet’s impact during his life was neglected by Iraqi cultural associations because of his affiliation with the Baath party.

Essays and Features

Play Reveals Wounds of Palestinian Occupation

By 
Bobby Gulshan

An event hosted by the Voices from the Holy Land Film Series will focus its next Online Discussion Salon on director Pamela Nice’s "It’s What We Do: A Play About the Occupation" on June 14, 2020 at 2 pm EST. The event will feature guest speaker Yonatan Shapira, a former IDF helicopter pilot, who has been involved in speaking out against the abuses of the IDF since his service. Please register for the one-hour discussion, which will be in a Zoom format, at this link. Organizers are asking all registrants to view a 55-minute video beforehand. You can access it at www.iwwdplay.org.

Earlier this year, the Israeli Knesset passed a law barring “Breaking the Silence” from presenting in schools, universities, or any other non-profit institutions. The initiative to enforce a ban on the group came from Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who accused “Breaking the Silence” of denigrating the reputation of the Israeli Defense Force in the eyes of Israeli youth.

 

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

Award-Winning Amin Maalouf Sees World Civilization on the Edge of the Abyss!
By 
Elie Chalala

Amin Maalouf recently received the National Order of Merit from the French government, earning the second-highest status in the title of Grand Officer. The author’s other decorations include the Prix Goncourt in 1993, as well as his induction into the Academie Francaise in 2011, filling the seat of Claude Levi Strauss. His books have been translated into 50 languages. His most recent work, “The Sinking [or Drowning] of Civilizations” (Le Naufrage des Civilisations, Grassat 2019), takes up Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, but shifts the focus from a clash between civilizations to a crisis that affects all aspects of human civilization as a whole. In the age of globalization and technological development, Maalouf claims that peoples and civilizations cannot be separated from each other in the way Huntington’s thesis suggests. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to add credence to the author’s claim.

BOOK REVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

New Film History Volume Documents, Preserves Legacy of Palestinian Cinema, From Nakba to the Present
By 
Al Jadid Staff

Nadia Yaqub’s recent book “Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution” (University of Texas Press) offers a valuable survey of Palestinian cinema, from its pre-history in the early photographs and films made by international relief organizations, up to its birth out of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s struggle against the Israeli State. Yaqub details the narrative of victimhood that dominated early visual documentation of Palestine, as presented by organizations like the American Friends Service Committee and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Such films depicted Palestinians as “seen but not heard, and their statelessness and victimhood are presented as timeless, ahistorical facts, rather than the results of a process of violent dispossession culminating in the Nakba in 1948.”

BOOK REVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

The Scanning of Signs: ‘Love, Sex and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability’
By 
Al Jadid Staff


Challenging ethnographic theorists like Claude Lévi-Strauss, L.L. Wynn’s “Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability” (University of Texas Press, 2018) considers aspects of love and desire often overlooked by theorists when describing kinship structures. Wynn focuses on 21st century Cairenes in her book, with research collected from 2000-2015 on middle- to upper-class men and women, predominantly heterosexual, and conversations overheard in Arabic.

BOOK REVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

Israeli Activist Narrates Palestinian Daily Struggle 'Behind the Wall'
By 
Al Jadid Staff


Jewish-Israeli author Ilana Hammerman’s recent memoir, “A Small Door Set in Concrete” (University of Chicago Press, 2019), takes readers into life after decades of occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This memoir traverses the experiences of Palestinien men, women, and children living behind the wall who are unable to move and act freely.

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

Bandar Abdel Hamid (1947-2020): Editor and Poet Transformed His Humble Damascus Apartment into Inspiring ‘Literary Salon’
By 
Elie Chalala

The “beautiful Bedouin poet” Bandar Abdel Hamid passed away at the age of 73 on February 17, in his Damascus home from a heart attack. He died quietly, discovered 16 hours later to have had a heart attack, without anyone being able to help him. His death sent a painful shock to his many friends in Syria and throughout the Arab world. A leading poet of the 1970s, Bandar’s work contributed to Arab culture and enriched film criticism while encouraging creativity in his peers;  he transformed his humble apartment in Damascus into a stage for all forms of art and dialogues among intellectuals, friends, and strangers.

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

Silent in First Person: Where is the Confessional Autobiography in Arab Literature?
By 
Al Jadid Staff

Confessions in autobiographies can achieve two things: they reveal all that the writers have concealed about their lives, or they serve to offend those around them in doing so. Some have used confessions to elevate their own characters, depicting their actions as courageous while recalling the wrongs done against them throughout their life. In Arab tradition, writers wish their readers to see them in a positive light, and readers look to autobiographies for ideal figures and role models for future generations, drawing on religious traditions and figures. Rather than touch on his misdeeds, the writer would instead share his accomplishments, highlighting only the positive parts, according to Ehab al-Najdi. The 2015 publication of the Egyptian Najdi’s “Literature of Confessions: Analytical Approaches from a Narrative Perspective” (Dar al-Maaref) examines the complex obstacles and scarcity of confessional writings in the Arab world.

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