The Face of the Enemy: Arab-American Writing Post-9/11

Using representations of the Arabs and Islam in American literary writing, this paper tries to examine the following questions. First, why does American literary Academia show a strong interest in the Middle East as evident in the works of Washington Irving and Mark Twain well before the United States' economic and political interests in the region emerged in the second half of the twentieth Century? Second, to what extent can these literary writings help readers understand the American cultural encounter with the Arab World as shown in this discourse? Finally, what are the required approaches for comprehending those aspects of Arab-American relationship reflected in these works? In modern America, it is undeniable that the 9/11 attacks have raised the American public curiosity to have an answer to questions such as Why were we attacked? Who attacked us? And what are the intentions behind them? It is also undeniable that this curiosity has promoted the American nationalism as reflected in the American literary thought in this particular spurt to write excessively on the attackers, their religion and culture. Accordingly, the majority of American literary publication pertaining to Islam and Arabs in the last ten years is written from the victim's point of view without providing the Islamic view on the terrorist attacks. Therefore, no wonder to find these works based mainly on negative stereotypes and prejudices, which are clearly observable in the various narratives describing Arab Muslims as fanatics, irrational, primitive, belligerent, and dangerous. These generalizations and simplifications indicate that

2018

Before 9/11, Arab-American scholars and writers used the trope of "invisibility" to refer to the place of their pan-ethnic community within American discourses on race and ethnicity. 9/11 consolidated the racialization of the category "Arab/Middle Eastern/Muslim" as a signifier of non-white Otherness (Salaita; Maira and Shihade; Naber). Among the violence in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has been an unrelenting, multivalent assault on the bodies, psyches, and rights of Arab, Muslim, and even South Asian immigrants as well as American citizens pertaining to these categories. For example, Muneer Ahmad, in his study, "Homeland insecurities: racial violence the day after September 11", contends that: Restrictions on immigration of young men from Muslim countries, racial profiling and detention of "Muslim-looking" individuals, and an epidemic of hate violence against Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities in the wake of September 11 recall the long history of racialized U.S. immigration and immigrant policy, [...]. They also recall the more recent national heritage of racialized infringements on citizenship and belonging. (338) This observation is borne out by the "national security" measures undertaken by the U.S. Justice Department during the first months after the attacks. The State security apparatus targeted almost exclusively people from the Middle East and South Asia, and led to the incarceration, deportation and interrogation of numerous individuals from the above-mentioned categories (Hassan). Arabs and Muslims who are U.S. citizens have also been affected, albeit indirectly, by these anti-terrorism measures. Although Arabs and other people from the Middle East are classified racially as "white" by the U.S. Census and most affirmative action forms, the U.S. government has unofficially constituted them as a distinct racial group by associating Arabs with terrorism and threats to national security (Hassan). This article focuses on representations of racial formations in contemporary, post-9/11 Arab-American poetry. Using imagology as a literary tool, I will analyze the works of two contemporary Arab-American Performance Poets, namely Suheir Hammad's "first writing since" and Andrea Assaf's "Quadroon/ Shatti Ya Dunya ". Hammad and Assaf both utilize African-American racial metaphors in their construction of group agency. Performance poet, Suheir Hammad's piece "first writing since" from her collection ZaatarDiva (2005)[1], written shortly after the events of 9/11, won her popular acclaim on the hip-hop/spoken word poetry scene in Russell Simmons's Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Andrea Assaf is a spoken word poet, performer, and cultural organizer. A co-founder and artistic director of Art2Action, a theatre work and interdisciplinary performance arts platform based in New York City, Assaf's performance work ranges from solo collaborative productions, to spoken word and community-based arts. Comparatist literary imagology studies the origin and function of characteristics and images of the "Self/Other", "as expressed textually, particularly in the way which they are presented in works of literature, plays, poems, travel books and essays" (Beller 7). R ACE AND A RAB-A MERICAN L ITERATURE "Arab" as racialized minority Arab-American literature both reflects and is situated within a historical context of contested racial, cultural, and political categories (Majaj; Ludescher; Hartman; Al Maleh; Fadda-Conrey). The literary texts produced by Americans of Arab descent from the first half of the 20 th century make clear the anxieties of early Arab immigrants as they struggled for inclusion as "white" Americans. Aware of their contested racial status in the American context, early Arab-American authors tended to emphasize those aspects of their identities more likely to gain acceptance by white America (Majaj). But while the definition of Arab immigrants as "non-white" in the early period reflected a politics of exclusion, the contemporary location of Americans of Arab descent as a "white" racial category is felt by Arab-Americans to obscure their realities (Majaj). The inadequacy of the category "white" to account for Arab-American experience in light of the political and cultural clashes with American foreign policy in the Middle East as well as issues of representation and inclusion into the mainstream at home in America underlies the growing search among contemporary Arab-American writers for categories of identification able to account for their realities. In this context, the assimilationist impulse of early Arab writers in America is largely absent in contemporary writing. Contemporary writers challenge the Othering process that the American nation subjects them to, but they are not willing to submerge their identity in order to claim inclusion or American identity. Both, pre-and post-9/11 Arab-American literature confronts a cultural, political, and social context fraught with tension. As part of this literature, poetry produced by Arab-Americans expresses this sensibility. Although Arab-American poetry has been in existence in America for over a century, it has only recently begun to be recognized as part of the ethnic landscape of literary America (Al Maleh). Arab-American poetry today still is a racialized "ethnic" literature, just beginning to emerge from its chrysalis to spread its wings for scholars and serious readers and critics, much less for the general reading public. The burgeoning of this literary orientation reflects in part the historical, social, and political contexts that have pushed Arab-Americans to the foreground, creating both new spaces for their voices and new urgencies of expression. In a more contemporary context, then, Arab-American poets find themselves engaged with elements of Arab-American identity that have historically been silenced, especially that of race. In fact, Majaj contends: After the early tensions around race had subsided, the settled Arab-American community largely attempted to pass for "white". But in recent decades, with the politicization of Arab identity to the extent that even non-Arabs fall afoul of anti-Arab racism, "passing" has proved impossible. [...]. During crises, Arabs [in America] can be reassured we exist as a distinct racial group. (para. 23) This shows that perceptions of race shape contemporary Arab-American poetry and vice versa, whether directly or indirectly. Realizing that "American" meant Christian, European, western, and white, contemporary Arab-American poets increasingly interrogate and challenge

atelier s'intéressera aux oeuvres publiées (poésie, roman, théâtre, non-fiction, roman graphique) après le 11 septembre par des écrivains appartenant à la communauté arabo-américaine. Les attentats perpétrés contre les États-Unis dans ce ciel de septembre que la poétesse Lena Khalaf Tuffaha qualifie de « awash in the false comfort of blue » 1 ont propulsé les arabo-américains sur le devant de la scène -eux qui étaient considérés jusque-là comme une des minorités ethniques les moins visibles aux États-Unis, « la plus invisible » même selon Joana Kadi 2 -et en ont fait l'ennemie par excellence de la nation américaine. Qu'il s'agisse du poème viral « First Writing Since » de Suheir Hammad, de la poésie de Samuel Hazo ou D. H. Melhem, outre la condamnation des attentats et le deuil, c'est bien la peur des représailles contre la communauté arabe que trahit cette poésie.

International Journal of Language and Literary Studies

Arab Americans living in the United States are represented in the intriguing and varied body of Arab American Literature. It is a diverse and significant body of writing that reflects the experiences and perspectives of Arab Americans in the United States. It explores powerful examples of how difficult it is to deal with identity, heritage, and belonging concerns in a diverse community. Arab American writers, from Ameen Rihani to Naomi Shihab Nye, have made creative contributions with their viewpoints, illuminating the rich tapestry of life in Arab America in everything from provocative novels to tender poetry and perceptive essays. However, Arab American authors have faced numerous challenges, including prejudice, stereotypes, language barriers, and limited publishing opportunities. Despite these obstacles, they have persisted in using their literary works as a means of self-expression, cultural preservation, and empowerment. To promote the visibility and acknowledgment of Arab Ame...

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 2009

Abstract: Bridgette Gabrielle, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, and Wafa Sultan, American writers of Arab or Muslim descent, have written testimonial narratives. They, I contend, take up the role of ethnographers or cultural insiders and produce highly problematic, yet popular, works which, neither purely literary nor solely political, allow them to play on their target audience’s expectations by performing as ethnic Americans. Yet, they manipulate their readers into believing that ethnic diversity and cultural and religious plurality are dangerous. In their testimonial narratives, they therefore imagine the United States as a white Judeo-Christian nation, thus erasing all pluralities, multi-ethnic diversity, and multicultural bodies whose rich fabric they make. Although their narratives marginalize Arab and Muslim Americans, their ultimate target is American multiculturalism.

University of Vienna, Institut für Orientalistik, Universität Wien. ISSN: ISSN: 0084-0076, 2016

Review paper on Silke Schmidt, (Re-)Framing the Arab/Muslim: Mediating Orientalism in Contemporary Arab American Life Writing.

This paper is a study of novels written by Arab American writers in an attempt to analyze how such works of fiction portray the life of Arab Americans in a post-9/11 America. The paper shows how Arab Americans deal with the consequences of 9/11, and it also reflects several other aspects that characterize Arab American writing as an emerging post-9/11 new voice. It investigates the role of Anglophone Arab fiction in paving the way for more intercultural understanding and attempting to de-orientalize the Arab. Some writers often try to negotiate with the American culture in order to arrive at an identity that incorporates multiple elements from both the culture of origin and the host culture. Hybrid and cosmopolitan in their approach, such writers also attempt to be cultural mediators, and they show growing concern about subverting the normative judgment and stereotypical images that have fixed the Arab American.

Albaydha University Journal , 2023

This paper attempts to trace the development of Arab-American literary tradition through three distinct generations-each of which responds quite differently to the identity politics, cultural hybridity, subversion of orientalist gaze, and the crisis of belonging amidst the inevitable multifacetedness of the Arab-American community. The literary works of the contemporary Arab-American writers are engaged with the idea of the American landscape as a long-term rather than a provisional home. In other words, this new generation of writers manages to hover over the divide between the two cultures and view the Arab world from the American soil. The paper finally approaches the Post-9/11 Arab-American novel in terms of receptiveness, characteristics, challenges, and future outlook. I argue that for the contemporary Arab-American novel to flourish, the integration of Arab experience into the American fabric, in the sense that themes and subject matters related to both sides of the hyphen, should be acknowledged as a cultural necessity. Ironically, this is the best way for Arab-American novelists to bring their distinct voices to the multi-vocal mainstream culture, to carve a niche for themselves. The useful analogy is the literary cultural expressions and experiences of the Asian, African or Canadian communities on the American soil; they are distinct, but not different from the cultural traditions of other diaspora communities.