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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

Arab American Literature Pioneers Incorporating Modernism and Reason: How Later Generations Reduced a Dynamic Legacy to Mere Genealogy (2-4)

By Elie Chalala
The pioneering Mahjar writing of first-wave Arab American literature has fascinated those in the diaspora community and their homelands for over a century. Modernist characteristics of this literature contributed to its fascination, as it developed earlier than modernism in Arabic literature.
 
The Mahjar modernist movement emerged in the early 20th century, rooted in romanticism and spiritual philosophy. Arab American poetry diverged from Arab poetry dramatically in form and theme, characterized by simple language, freedom from tradition in rhyme and meter, and the abandonment of stereotypes. This modernist literature was, in some ways, an antecedent to its Arab counterparts. Fascinatingly, while Arab literature did not embrace modernism until the late interwar period, members of the Arab American intellectual community readily adopted the literary movement.
Essays and Features

Haidar Haidar, 1936-2023: Author Who Shunned Spotlight and For Whom Writing Was Truly Its Own Reward

By Elie Chalala

As a young man, Syrian author and novelist Haidar Haidar had been silently involved in political events in his country. Like many Arab and Syrian intellectuals, he participated in the Algerian Arabization process, volunteering to teach the Arabic language in Algeria. His works have been translated into German, English, French, and Italian and remain read in the Arab world, achieving various success. His novel, “The Leopard,” was adapted into a movie directed by the late prominent director Nabil Al-Maleh, winning many awards in international festivals. He often explored his connection to nature in his writing, touching on the relationship between hunter and prey and his own reflections as a novelist and hunter. 

Essays and Features

Lebanese Government Brought to Reckoning on the Anniversary of Beirut Port Explosion

By 
Elie Chalala

Victims of the devastating Beirut port explosion have no answers or justice, even a full year after the disaster. According to Human Rights Watch, the August 2020 explosion at Beirut port’s hangar 12 decimated the significant sectors of the city, killing 218 people, injuring 7,000, and displacing 300,000. Despite protests from victims to find those responsible for the explosion, efforts to investigate have been thwarted repeatedly. Lebanon’s legal and political systems have allowed the officials responsible to avoid accountability, benefiting from a lack of judicial independence, immunity provided by existing laws, lack of respect for fair trial standards, and due process violations. As the Lebanese government continues to prove itself incapable of delivering justice, Human Rights Watch recently published a report covering evidence revealed in the 127-page report, “‘They Killed Us from the Inside’: An Investigation into the August 4 Beirut Blast” and calls for an international investigation.

Habermas vs. the Sheikh Zayed Book Award: An Intellectual or Soft Power Conflict!

By 
Michael Teague

Jürgen Habermas's decision to reject the Sheikh Zayed Book Award's "Cultural Personality of the Year" prize set off a heated debate in the Arab press. The most famous remaining representative of the second generation of the Frankfurt school, despite his considerable bibliography, Habermas was not well-known at the popular level in the Arab world. After his initial acceptance and then rejection of the Sheikh Zayed award, however, intellectuals in the employ of the United Arab Emirates criticized the German philosopher vociferously. 

Can a Nation Plagued by Mass Corruption, Decaying Institutions, and Rabid Sectarianism Deliver Justice For those Lost and Victimized by the August Explosion?

By 
Elie Chalala

One cannot miss the irony of the Lebanese officials allegedly responsible for what is possibly the third or fourth largest non-nuclear explosion in the world hiding behind “immunity” from a crime that claimed over 207 people and injured 6,000, while devastating large parts of the Lebanese capital. The Beirut Port explosion in August 2020 measured about one-twentieth the size of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb, according to the BBC. As its one-year anniversary approaches, many Lebanese are still struggling to hold accountable those responsible for the blast.

Important, Sometimes Controversial Iraqi Poet Saadi Youssef (1934 - 2021) Requests a ‘Funeral Without Mourners’

By 
Elie Chalala
 
The legendary and controversial Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef died at 87 in his Harefield home outside of London on June 12 from lung cancer. The poet, whose multitude of works encompassed poetry, prose, literary criticism, translation, and memoir, leaves decades’ worth of work penned in exile and translated into several languages, among them English, French, German, and Italian.

Controversy Over Mohammad Shukri’s Literary Legacy Outlives the Author

By 
Al Jadid Staff
Many students and scholars of Arabic literature would recall the debates on the books of Mohammad Shukri (1935-2003) late last century and a part of the early 21st century. The debates centered primarily on Shukri’s picaresque approach, which included harsh depictions of repression, marginalization, deprivation, morality, breaching taboos and censorship, and of course, the banning of his books in most Arab countries. We can categorize many of his books as autobiographical, and the opposition was not to this type of literature but to the language and details he used. His spontaneity violated all technical and artistic norms in both Moroccan and Arab literature, especially in “The Bare Bread,” “Age of Mistakes,” and “Faces,” his autobiographical trilogy.
 

The Judiciary, Latest Indicator of Lebanon’s Impending Collapse:

A Judge Runs Amok
By 
Elie Chalala
The collapse of the Lebanese state grows imminent as news of different sectors unraveling emerges every day. The latest crisis reached the judiciary, which — though already known for its politicization and sectarianism — currently deals with a judge whose erratic, politicized personality violates all the norms of judicial behaviors and traditions. This controversial judge is Mount Lebanon state prosecutor, Ghada Aoun.
 

In a Statistical Vacuum, Speculating on the Arab-American Vote, 2016 vs. 2020

By 
Elie Chalala
 
While much of the country — and even the world — focused on the last U.S. election and remained engrossed even after its results and consequences, the picture of this historic event in the Arab world was unlike anything that was happening here. Regrettably, the distorted analysis and coverage by Arab media influenced to some extent the attitudes and electoral choices of many Arab immigrants in the U.S.

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