Teaching Arabs, Writing Self: Memoirs of an Arab-American Woman - Softcover

Shakir, Evelyn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566569249 ISBN 13: 9781566569248

Publisher: Olive Branch Press, 2013

Synopsis

Evelyn Shakir's witty, wise, and beautifully written memoir explores her status as an Arab American woman, from the subtle bigotry she faced in Massachusetts as a second-generation Lebanese whose parents were not only foreign but eccentric, to the equally poignant blend of dislocation and homecoming she felt in Bahrain, Syria, and Lebanon, where she taught American literature to university students. She effortlessly combines personal anecdote with cultural, political, and historical background, and is incapable of stereotyped thinking: one of the book's many pleasures is the diversity she finds among the people she encounters in the Middle East, including not only students, but cab drivers, storekeepers, and the guys who make the spinach pies at the bakery down the street from her apartment. As Shakir explores her own identity, she leads the reader to an appreciation of the richness and complexity of being Arab American (or any mixed heritage) in an increasingly small world.

About this title

About the Author:

Evelyn Shakir is a fiction writer, essayist, and scholar of Arab American literature. She is the author of Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States and Remember Me to Lebanon: Stories of Lebanese Women in America.

Review:

A Boston teacher on Fulbright grants to Lebanon, Syria and Bahrain (pre-Arab Spring) provides surprising, elucidating insights into the Arab character.

Born to Lebanese immigrants, Shakir (Remember Me to Lebanon: Stories of Lebanese Women in America, 2007, etc.) was thoroughly Americanized, growing up outside of Boston, and even attended St. George s Orthodox Church and later Wellesley College, where she embarked on her career as an academic. In this well-honed, posthumous memoir (Shakir died in 2010), consisting partly of childhood memories and partly of her experiences teaching English-language literature to young Arabs, the author sounds out her own character for what it means to be Lebanese and later recognizes many familiar traits in the old world of her parents: love of family, respect for the wishes of one s parents, modesty, pride and generosity. Along with her brother, Shakir was surrounded by an extended Lebanese family, hard workers in the mills, presses and sewing shops of the Northeast. Her mother was a charter member of the Syrian Ladies Aid group and her uncle, a flamboyant co-owner of the iconic Cyclone roller coaster at Revere Beach. Shakir ventured on her Fulbright in the mid-2000s, long after the Lebanese civil war but just shy of an Israeli bombing campaign and well before the current civil war in Syria. Hence, her observations are pertinent and subtle, rather than political, and pertain especially to the various shades of Arabic diversity, such as accents and dress, especially women s dress, between Beirut and Bahrain (jeans versus abaya) and religious piety e.g., in the surprising reactions of many students to the perceived permissiveness of Arab-American literature that Shakir introduced in class. In her tight, witty prose, Shakir challenges easy assumptions about ethnicity, religion and belonging.

One open-hearted teacher s resistance to narrow definitions of identity. --Kirkus Review November 2013

About this edition

• Publisher: Olive Branch Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1566569249
• ISBN 13: 9781566569248
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224