Omar Baz Radwan

Representations of identity in contemporary (post-9/11) Lebanese-American poetry

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Representations of identity in contemporary (post-9/11)

Lebanese-American poetry

Omar Baz Radwan

SALIS Scholar in Comparative Literature

ID: 58210566

Co-supervision: Jean-Philippe Imbert (D.C.U.)

Samira Aghacy (L.A.U.)

Abstract

In this paper, I look at Lebanese-American poetry in a post-9/11

context. The focus is on the literary discourse presented in the works

of two contemporary Lebanese-American poets, Lawrence Joseph

and Elmaz Abinader, both third-generation Lebanese-Americans.

Using imagology as a methodological tool, I will examine

representations and constructions of ethnic identity as negotiated in

the texts. The imagological distinction between auto-images (Self)

and hetero-images (Other) is of particular use to this study, with

respect to the relations and possible interactions between these

images. The first section of the paper presents the methodological

approach to the poetic discourse. The second section of my paper

includes an overview of the theoretical implications of contemporary

Arab American ethnic and literary studies with a focus on a post-

9/11 context. An imagological analysis of the poems forms the final

part of the paper. Identity struggles layered into the poems

negotiating how Lebanese Americans fit in the United States both as

Arabs and as Americans will be analysed.

Keywords: Identity – Lebanese Americans – Imagology –

Multiethnic (Arab American) literature – post-9/11 U.S.A

Introduction

Anglophone Arab literature in North America dates back to the second half of the 19th

century with the arrival of the first wave of Arab immigrants from Greater Syria (what is

today Lebanon, Syria and Jordan). By1920, the Mahjar (Emigrant) poets had begun Al-

Rabitah al-Qalamiyyah (The Pen League Bond) and the first Arab-American literary/political

journal, The Syrian World in New York City. The league included distinguished poets and

writers such as Nasib „Arida, Mikha‟il Naimy, Elia Abu Madi, Rashid Ayyub, Amine Rihani

and Gibran Khalil Gibran. The Arab world gained fresh recognition after the disintegration of

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the Ottoman Empire post World War I. In North America, the league of Mahjar poets, with

Gibran in the lead, turned their attention to the homeland, Lebanon. They directed their

literary and theoretical productions1 against outworn social customs and religious tyranny,

while supporting independence from decadent Ottoman rule (Badawi, 1975). Influenced by

European Romanticism and American Transcendentalism, they contended for the

modernization of Arabic poetry and the total rejection of outmoded literary modes and values

back in Lebanon and the wider Arab world (Salem, 2003).

The decades after World War II witnessed a more diverse and politically active

Lebanese-American community. This second wave of Lebanese immigrants saw that they

had to become fully-fledged Americans. However, despite their enthusiasm about becoming

Americans, Lebanese immigrants, being part of the larger Arab American community, “[...]

soon found that there would be impediments on the road to assimilation in the form of

charges that they were racially inferior and thus not worthy of becoming American citizens”

(Ludescher 2006:99). Lebanese-American writers of this era were concerned with their ethnic

and racial status and with assimilation into the wider American community. They tended to

stress those aspects of their culture that were acceptable to Americans, while downplaying

those aspects that Americans might find unfamiliar or alien. In particular, notes Lisa S. Majaj,

“they stressed their Christian identity [and] their geographical origin in the Holy land”

(2000:328). Examples of this literary orientation can be found in the works of Lebanese-

American Protestant minister Abraham Rihbany2 and in various Lebanese-American writings

of the time such as in Vance Bourjaily‟s Confessions of a Spent Youth (1960), William Peter

Blatty‟s Which Way to Mecca, Jack? (1960), Eugene Paul Nassar‟s Wind of the Land (1979),

and Joseph Geha‟s Through and Through: Toledo Stories (1990), amongst others.

However, conflicts in the Arab world, the birth of the State of Israel on disputed

Palestinian territory, and American foreign policy towards the Middle East combined to raise

political consciousness and solidarity within the Arab American community, which most

Lebanese-Americans identified with. Michael Suleiman points out that:

1 Gibran and his contemporaries, however, did not write about the Arab/Syrian/Lebanese component in detail,

specifically in their English works, and tended to take the role of “global citizen[s] who refused national

labelling” (Al Maleh, 2009).

2 Early Arab-American authors emphasized “white”, Christian aspects of their identity in order to gain

acceptance in American society, what Arab-American critic, Lisa Suheir Majaj, labelled as “Strategic

representation” (2000:328). A typical example of such representation is evident in works such as Rihbany‟s

semi-autobiographical novel, A Far Journey (1914).

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By 1967, members of the third generation of the early Arab

immigrants had started to awaken to their own identity and

to see that identity as Arab, not “Syrian”. Elements of this

third generation combined with politically sophisticated

immigrants to work for their [Arab] ethnic community and

the causes of their people in the old homelands (1999:10-

11).

The result was the establishment of Arab American organisations such as the Arab American

University Graduates (AAUG), the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC),

the Arab American Institute (AAI), and, most recently, the Radius of Arab American Writers

Inc. (RAWI).

The attacks of September 11, 20013 horrified America and the wider international

community. For Arab Americans, shock was compounded by the realisation that the attacks

would present a major impediment to their hopes of integrating into American/Western

society. Moreover, Arab Americans became at once visible, needing to defend themselves and

seeking to assert an identity and express solidarity more so than ever in the United States (Al

Maleh, 2009). One of the most painful issues that confronts Arab American writers today,

notes Ludescher (2006), is how to react to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In an article published

shortly after 9/11, editor Elie Chalala expressed the shock and horror that many Arab

American writers and intellectuals felt: “[...] in one fell swoop, the terrorists destroyed the

very thing that [Arabs in the United States] had spent years trying to correct: anti-Arab

stereotyping in American society” (2002 cited in Ludescher 2006:107). The negative post-

9/11 experiences of Arab/Muslim Americans, however, were not a result of the attacks alone.

Americans readily accepted anti-Arab allegations on the basis of pre-existing social

constructions that were in place well before 9/11 (Cainkar, 2009).

This paper focuses on post-9/11 representations of ethnic identity in contemporary

Lebanese-American poetry, from an Arab-American perspective. Using imagology as a

literary tool, I will analyse the works of two, third generation Lebanese-American poets,

namely Lawrence Joseph‟s “Why Not Say What Happens?” and Elmaz Abinader‟s “This

House, My Bones”. Discussions of ethnicity are typically situated within interpretive

frameworks that reflect “[...] the quest for public affirmation of group identity for the purpose

of cultural survival” (Taylor 1994 cited in Majaj 1999:320). In this study, such interpretive

3 (henceforth referred to here as 9/11)

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frameworks of ethnic identity construction will be based on the subjectivity of the literary

texts.

Methodology

The ultimate perspective of imagology (image studies) is a theory of cultural or

national stereotypes, not a theory of cultural or national identity (Leerssen 2007). In Beller

and Leerssen‟s (eds.) Imagology: The cultural construction and literary representation of

national characters, a critical survey (2007), imagology is defined as the critical analysis of

national stereotypes in literature (and in other forms of cultural representation). The term,

according to Beller and Leerssen, is a “technical neologism” which “[...] applies to research

in the field of our mental images of the „Other‟ and of ourselves” (2007:xiii). Imagology is

not a form of sociology, “[...] even though it is situated in the broader interdisciplinary field

of the human, cultural and social sciences” (ibid.), since it aims at analysing

commonplace/hearsay, subjective and imaginated representations of national stereotypes and

images rather than presenting “[...] empirical observations or statements of fact” (ibid.). It is

therefore not a study of a society or a specific nation, but rather a critical analysis of “[...]

literary and cultural representation (and construction) of purported national characters”

(Beller and Leerssen 2007:xiii).

Moreover, “ethnotypes,” defined by Beller and Leerssen as “stereotypical

characterizations attributed to ethnicities or nationalities, national images or common places,

are representative of literary and discursive conventions” (2007:xiv), not of social realities.

These characterizations are “[...] imaginated to the extent that they lie outside the area of

testable reports or statements of fact” (ibid.). Imaginated literary discourse thus offers

characterological explanations, commonplace subjective images of cultural differences, and

aims at an analysis of identity constructs in literary representations which “[...] are silhouetted

in the perspectival [subjective] context of the representing text or discourse (the spectant)”

(Beller and Leerssen 2007:xiv). For this reason, imagological studies must take into

consideration the “dynamics between those images which characterize the Other (hetero-

images) and those which characterize one‟s own domestic identity (self-images or auto-

images)” (ibid.).

Textually codified information, according to Beller, is initiated from preconceived

value judgements and represents “the whole through partial representation” (2007:5).

Comparatist literary imagology studies the origin and function of characteristics and images

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of other countries and peoples, “[...] as expressed textually, particularly in the way which

they are presented in works of literature, plays, poems, travel books and essays” (Beller

2007:7). This notion of representation of the „other‟ in literature is a historical phenomenon

which dates back to the “[...] late classical topical technique of legal reasoning” (ibid.) in

which a tradition of topoi has developed concerning the characteristics of various peoples and

places ever since the Enlightenment (in Europe).

Theoretical Implications

Homi K. Bhabha, in The Location of Culture, defines identity as a form of knowledge

which “allows for the possibility of simultaneously embracing two contradictory beliefs, one

official and one secret, one archaic and one progressive, one that allows the myth of origins,

the other that articulates difference and division” (1994:115). In his introduction to the 2008

Arab American poetry anthology, Inclined to Speak, editor Hayan Charara observes that in

literature, identity “[...] only further complicates the matter” and for Arab American poetry

this „complicated‟ matter of identity “[...] also happens to be the sphere towards which most

discussions gravitate and the traps from which most Arab American poets work ceaselessly

to break free” (2008: xiii). Each poem in the anthology, Charara asserts, disrupts the notions

and expectations that most people have of Arab Americans, “while simultaneously working

together, as a body of literature, to express something that is undeniably Arab American,”

even if this collectivity is constantly under construction (ibid.).

Arab American critic, Lisa S. Majaj, has observed that Arab American writers today,

like their predecessors, inhabit multiple cultures and write for multiple audiences: American,

Arab, and Arab American. Majaj points out that:

While the details of our [Arab American] personal

experiences differ, for many of us this negotiation of

cultures results in a form of split vision: even as we turn one

eye to our American context, the other eye is always turned

toward the Middle East (1999:67).

This „split vision‟, according to Majaj, is expressed in Arab American literature “through a

tilt toward either Arab or American identification” (ibid.). Therefore, by mid-century, Majaj

argues, the focus on Americanization led to second-generation writing exhibiting a “deep-

seated ambivalence toward Arab ethnicity” (68). The late 1960‟s and 1970‟s, however, saw

the rise of Arab American literature, primarily poetry, which engaged and affirmed an Arab

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ethnicity, and that paralleled the emergence of a pan-ethnic Arab American identity which

bridged the different national and religious identities of immigrants of Arabic-speaking

backgrounds. According to Majaj, situating and initiating both this Arab American literature

and this pan-ethnic identification were two cultural currents: firstly the ethnic „roots‟

phenomenon which gained ground in the 1970‟s, providing the foundation for the current

celebration of multiculturalism in the U.S., and secondly, the growing politicization of the

Arab American community. This politicization resulted from the influence of new Arab

immigrants to the U.S., and from political and military conflicts in the Middle East. Most

notable are the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the oil embargos of the 1970‟s, the 17-year Lebanese

war, the Israeli invasions of Lebanon, especially that of 1982, the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis. The

hijackings and bombings of the 1980‟s and 1990‟s further contributed to the demonization of

Arabs and Muslims (Majaj 1999).

The attacks of 9/11 brought Arab/Muslim Americans into the spotlight. In her

research on post-9/11 Arab American experiences, based on interviews over a two-year

period (2003 and 2004), Louis Cainkar argues that the negative treatment of Arabs and

Muslims in the United States after 9/11 was caused not by the 9/11 attacks themselves, but

“[...] by pre-existing social constructions that configured them as people who would readily

conduct and approve of such attacks” (2009:2). According to Cainkar, for decades prior to

the attacks, Arabs and Muslims were portrayed in American culture as “[...] having an

inherent proclivity to violence, with a pathological culture and a morally deviant religion that

sanctions killing” (2009:2). They were socially constructed as „others,‟ as “[...] people not

like “us,” an interpretation shown to be widely accepted in public opinion polls long before

9/11” (ibid.). Steven Salaita, in his critique on Arab American literature, Arab American

Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics (2007), argues that after 9/11, Islam in America

became racialized and came to imply a distinct ethnic group, specifically Middle Eastern,

Arabs. Therefore, Salaita asserts, the mere presence of Arab Americans in the United States

today symbolizes an Islamic presence that generates ambiguous states of being. Salaita

assigns a number of roles to this ambiguous state of being, namely what he labels as the U.S.

racial paradigms4, demographic trends, discriminatory legislation, corporate avarice,

religious fundamentalism, American foreign policy, as well as other specific phenomena

4 Anti-Arab racism in the U.S. is widely referred to by Arab American critics in their attempt to highlight the

positioning of Arabs within a mainstream American discourse. Steven Salaita (2006), for example, attributes

U.S. foreign policy, imperialism, “New World Settlement” (6), xenophobia, religious bias, and immigration to

the creation and sustainability of “anti-Arab racism” (ibid.) in the U.S.A today (loc. Cit.).

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related to Arab Americans, in the U.S. national context. Salaita goes even further by

announcing that Arab Americans in post-9/11 U.S.A have become “[...] marginalised sand

niggers whose social and judicial troubles are derivative in a majoritarian, White and

racialized legal/political system” (2007:19). Salaita contends that:

Sand nigger is not only an epithet increasingly common

among American purveyors of anti-Arab racism, but also a

signifier of the alienation of minorities wrought by the

majoritarian notion of American exceptionalism. It is a new

word ensconced in centuries-old ideas [...] that reveal the

hierarchized organization of American ethnic communities

(2007:19).

Salaita (2007) argues that the biggest issues facing Arab Americans today are these

multifarious problems of inclusion in American mainstream society. These problems speak

to the composition of an Arab American Studies as much as the positioning of Arab

Americans of all nationalities in the United States.

Literary Representations: Lawrence Joseph and Elmaz Abinader

Lawrence Joseph‟s “Why Not Say What Happens?” from his fourth book of poems, Into It

(2005) presents unsentimental images of a post-9/11 America whose “truth is stripped from

its power” (24). Joseph transgresses ethnic insularity to give voice to the extremes of

American reality which in Rosenthal‟s words, “[...] took war and repression and privilege for

granted” (Introduction, 1970). The poet Lawrence Joseph is also a lawyer and a legal scholar.

The grandson of Catholic Lebanese immigrants, he grew up in Detroit. Since 1981, Joseph

has made lower Manhattan his home. The event of Sept. 11, 2001 where “everything [is]

immense and out of context” (2005:20) sets the tone for the poems in Into It.

The poem (“Why Not Say What Happens?”), divided into 12 Sections (I-XII), opens

with biblical allusions situating the poet in a Christian background and affirming the

apocalyptic perception resonating throughout the work, where:

It has nothing to do with the apocalyptic,

The seven-headed beast from the sea,

the two-horned beast from the earth, have always –

I know, I‟ve studied it – been with us.

Me? I‟m only an accessory to particular images. (24)

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Despite the specifically religious resonance, the ethnic positioning of these lines, the

identity of the subject “Me” is left to the imagination; the ethnicity or identity of the speaker

is unspecified and left to resonate. However, “According to the translation of the police

transcript, / the sheikh – the arrested head / of the cell mockingly said – in a plot / involving a

chemical attack” (24) in Section II invokes religious implications, specifically Islamic and, by

substitution in a post-9/11 American psyche, Arab. Unlike the biblical transcript of Section I,

“a translation from the Latin” (24) the translated “police transcript” (ibid.) here is from

Arabic. The image here is Islam/Arab in relation to terrorism. Joseph situates himself

„mockingly‟, despite his Christian, Catholic background, within the terrorist categorization of

Arabs in America, an auto-image of limited identity. The stigmatization of Arab identity,

though not directly referred to, is stronger than personal inclinations or beliefs which become

“[...] an accessory to particular images” (24). The two images (Arab and terrorism) intertwine

limiting the poet. Joseph, in direct reference to Wittgenstein, later writes “The limits of my

language / are the limits of my world [...] / The realization – the state of the physical world /

depends on shifts in the delusional thinking / of very small groups” (Section IV: 25).

Salaita points out that Arabs in the United States “have inherited a peculiar history of

exclusionary self-imaging” (2007:110). Moreover, the vigilantly synthetic American

consciousness would, in its present form, according to Salaita, be impossible without the “by

now tired strategy of demonizing the Other – in this case Arabs, all of whom, according to

the totalized pronoun usage common in the United States, are terrorists” (2007:119). In

Section III, Joseph turns the tables around, providing a glimpse of American violence in an

international context. Here, Joseph sarcastically presents the facts of American violence in an

international context separating himself, both as an Arab and an American, from this reality

in an attempt to negotiate his personal identity. He writes:

Yet another latest version of another

ancient practice – mercenaries, as they were once known,

are thriving, only this time

they‟re called “private military contractors.”

During the last few years their employees

have been sent to Bosnia, Nigeria, Colombia, and, of course,

most recently, Iraq. No one knows

how extensive the industry is, but some military experts

estimate a market of tens of billions of dollars. (25)

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Joseph plainly states the facts, setting America‟s “billions of dollars” weapons market against

the image of anti-Arab sentiment in the U.S.A. As one reviewer observed of Joseph‟s recent

works in Into It, when Joseph “stumbles upon a potential truth, he doesn't shy away from

stating it clearly and almost aphoristically” (Gilewicz 2006, page not available). Joseph

presents information cleanly and evocatively, and in doing so most effectively displays his

search for truth and reason “[...] in a world whose operators don't value them very much”

(ibid.).

The only direct reference to ethnicity is stated in Sections VII and VIII of the poem.

Here, the poet is first visited by his grandmother:

It is to her, mostly, I owe

the feeling that, in cases of need,

those transfigured in eternal love help us

certainly with eternal,

and, perhaps, also, with temporal gifts;

that, in eternal love, all is gratis –

all that comes from eternal love

is gratis. (29)

The only place where the poet feels safe is in dreams (as opposed to reality) invoking the

past, his only image of a feeling of elevation above the scene of violence and stereotypes.

Moreover, in Sections VIII-XI, the poem refers to images of the poet‟s father “getting up in

the morning to go to work [...] / As for the economies on which my parent‟s lives depended,

they won‟t be found / in any book” (29). This image reminds the reader of first wave

Lebanese immigrants who came to America searching for work and an escape from civil

strife and religious tensions back home. Working mainly as peddlers, the early emigrants

were keen on acquiring money and succeeding in business in the U.S.A (Harik 1987). Later,

aspiring to live the American dream and become part of American society, the early

immigrants worked hard and for long hours to attain businesses and afford a better life for

themselves and their children. This part of history which reflects the reality of hardworking

Arabs of the earlier generations has been wiped out completely from the American

imagination. It‟s in the details of his parent‟s history in America, however, that the poet

settles for his identity, away from stereotypes and invocations:

It‟s the details that dream out

the plot. Rearrange the lies, the conceits,

the crimes, the exploitation

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of needs and desires,

and it‟s still there – inside it,

at times, a dreamer at work, right now

it‟s me. (30)

The image here is hopeful and ominous since it is in dreams that the poet can escape reality

rather than change it. He nevertheless still carries that dream.

Elmaz Abinader‟s “This House, My Bones” begins with an invitation to the poet‟s

house where the reader encounters a “gold cloth” (2008:8) embroidered by the poet‟s

grandmother (Sitt, in Arabic). The poem consists of four stanzas of varied length laid out in

free verse. It begins inside the poet‟s house, supposedly in the U.S.A, and unfolds with

images from a mosque “inlaid with sea colored pebbles” (8), a war-torn Lebanon (perhaps

implying the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war), and ends back where it begins, the poet‟s house,

with the opening line, “Enter the heart” (9). The poem is not set in a definite time, location or

country, however. The scenes in the poem shift suddenly to different locations in a dream-

like disposition inside the poet‟s mind. The boundaries separating America from Lebanon,

West from East, and the poet‟s present life in the U.S. from her past in Lebanon are

intertwined in Abinader‟s poem.

Abinader refrains from specifically naming her Christian, Lebanese or Arab ethnicity,

instead speaking more generally. However, throughout the poem she implicitly draws on

Arabic names and images, suggesting the poet‟s Arab heritage which underlies her poetic

perception. The first stanza refers to Arab images and names inside the poet‟s house. In a

warm, welcoming tone, Abinader writes:

Enter the house,

Sit at the table covered in gold

A cloth, Sitt embroidered

For the third child‟s birth.

Take the tea, strong and minty,

Hold the glass warm

Against your palms, fragrances

Of centuries fill you, sweetness

Rises up to meet you. The youngest boy

Fuad, shows you a drawing

He has made of a horse (8)

The house becomes a symbol of a warm culture, an Arab culture filled with “fragrances of

centuries”. The barbarity and cruelty of Arab civilisation and by correspondence Islam

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portrayed within the context of post-9/11 disappear inside Abinader‟s house. Cainkar points

out that long before and after 9/11, Arabs in general and Muslims in specific were widely

represented in American culture “not only as an inherently volatile group that threatened

American global allies and interests but also as a group that potentially threatened American

culture itself” (2009:2). The auto-images presented by Abinader in her opening stanza are far

from threatening, almost apologetic in their tone and nature. In Writers on America (2002), a

book edited by George Clack presenting 15 essays by a diverse group of contemporary

American writers, poets, essayists, and intellectuals, on how being an American has affected

their decision to write, Abinader presents a vivid description of her house in her essay, “Just

off Main Street”. She writes:

When I was young, my house had a magic door. Outside

that door was the small Pennsylvania town where I grew

up. Main Street ran in front of our house bearing the

standard downtown features (31).

The house becomes an escape from the alienation and stereotyping which the poet grew up

with as a young Arab girl. She recalls:

In these moments of social exchange, the illusion of

similarity between me and the girls in my class floated

away, bubble light. Despite sharing the same school

uniform, being in the Brownies, singing soprano in the

choir, and being a good speller, my life and theirs were

separated by the magic door. And although my classmates

didn't know what was behind that portal, they circled me in

the playground and shouted "darkie" at my braids trying to

explode into a kinky mop, or "ape" at my arms bearing

mahogany hair against my olive pale skin (31).

The “magic door” is the threshold for an immigrant child of Arab descent growing up in a

White American neighbourhood which separates the stereotypes, the unfamiliar world outside

from the safe haven, the familiar, inside the house.

In stanza 2, images from the interior of a mosque are presented in colourful and

intricate overtones. The mosque in Abinader‟s poem is not a threatening place where terrorist

attacks are planned and anti-American conspiracies are carried out. Again, similar to the

house in stanza 1, it is a welcoming place of significant culture:

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Enter the mosque,

Admire the arches

Inlaid with sea colored pebbles,

Follow the carpets, long runners

Of miracles in thread, your feet still damp

Slip against the marble floor.

Spines of men curl into seashells

In the room ahead. (8)

Salaita argues that “nothing has been more critical to the racialization of Arabs in the United

States than Islam, and nothing, correspondingly, has more ability to preclude Arab Americans

from total assimilation” (2007:8). Pertinent here is Salaita‟s (2007) argument that the events

of 9/11 created a series of ambiguous states of being for Arab Americans, each reflective of

the invented realities necessarily engendered by American patriotic narratives, themselves

rendered increasingly narrow by pervasive fables of tragedy which followed the attacks. The

fragmentation of American society, according to Salaita into majority/minority binaries

ensured that the predominant response to 9/11 would be to appropriate the “new Arab enemy”

(2007:22) into a familiar category: an alien presence bound unwillingly to the racialization

and stereotyping of the majoritarian, white elite. Abinader knows this. She portrays Islam as a

faith, an ancient culture in opposition to the rather frightening anti-Western terrorist

organization prevalent in the American imagination. She continues in stanza two:

Echoes

Of the muezzin shoot around you

Fireworks of speeches and prayers.

Don‟t be afraid because they worship

Unlike you. Be afraid that worship

Becomes the fight, faith the enemy;

And yours the only one left standing. (8-9)

Moreover, the image of Islam as an unthreatening faith like any other in the U.S. is presented

here in contrast to the violence inflicted on Lebanon as a result of America‟s „War on

Terrorism‟ portrayed in Stanza 3. The poet seems to situate herself both as an Arab and as an

American citizen against the real threat of „justified‟ wars in which civilians are the only

victims. According to Glaister, in his article, “Bush helped Israeli attack on Lebanon‟” in The

Guardian (2006), the US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign

in Lebanon in 2006. According to the article, American and Israeli officials met in the spring,

discussing plans on how to tackle Hezbollah in the South of the country. Moreover, Glaister

(2006), quoting a US government consultant, points out that “A successful Israeli Air Force

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bombing campaign [...] could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a

potential American pre-emptive attack to destroy [Hezbollah‟s overlord] Iran's nuclear

installations”. Without sympathizing with or specifically mentioning the Shi‟a Muslim

guerrillas in South Lebanon, Abinader highlights the suffering that Lebanese civilians endured

during the 30-day war:

Someone asks, what should we do

While we wait for the bombs, promised

And prepared? How can we ready ourselves?

Do we gather our jewelry and books,

And bury them in the ground? Do we dig

Escape tunnels in case our village is invaded? (9)

Against this image, the muezzin‟s (official who summons to prayer) speeches in the mosque

are no longer the source of threat. Blind force is.

The poem ends with a call to love and understanding where the poet invites the reader into

“the heart” (9). Abinader concludes with the following lines:

The story: that life was begun with faith,

In fear that threats, predictions and actions

Are a history already written, spiralling,

Loose and out of control. No amount of hope

Can save it. No amount of words can stop it.

Hold the heart. Imagine it is yours. (10)

Abinader breaks the boundaries between „us‟ and „them‟ here in her call for mutual

understanding and a coalition amongst human beings against a real threat.

Conclusion

Arab Americans in the U.S. today face rising forces of hostility, violence and discrimination.

In contrast to the earlier Arab immigrant population, composed largely of Christians from

Mount Lebanon, the current Arab American community is far from homogeneous. This

increasingly diverse population often finds itself negotiating a political and cultural context

that demonizes Arab and Muslim culture while implicitly excluding Arab Americans from

perceptions of American identity (Majaj, 1999). As members of a demonized minority, Arab

American writers in the United States have tended, of necessity, to address communal

concerns as Arab Americans rather than individual ones (Akash and Mattawa 1999).

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According to Salaita , “[...] the Arab is an ethnic icon manufactured painstakingly in the

United States since the nineteenth century, an icon that was expedited into political eminence

after 9/11” (2007:110). Arabs in the United States have inherited a “peculiar history” (ibid.)

of exclusionary self-imaging in North America. The events of 9/11 provided empirical and

political pretexts to legitimize anti-Arab racism. Elmaz Abinader and Lawrence Joseph both

negotiate their identities as Arabs in the U.S.A, as Lebanese-Americans and as American

citizens from this perspective. Arab American fiction, Salaita (2011) argues, is highly varied

even if individual works get lumped together into the same category. As Lebanese-

Americans, Abinader and Joseph refer to their ethnic Lebanese roots through their parents

and grandparents, earlier generations which seem to be the only link to their Lebanese

origins. However, unlike earlier Lebanese-American writers who idealised Lebanon or

highlighted parts of their Lebanese culture that fit into an American setting, both Abinader

and Joseph negotiate their Lebanese ethnicity within an Arab-American context. Joseph‟s

approach gives voice to the extremes of American reality in the time (post-9/11) since, as

Joseph puts it, “the game changed” (2007:63). Abinader on the other hand invites her readers

into her sacred space as an Arab and attempts to turn the picture inside out.

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References

Abinader, Elmaz (2008) “This House, My Bones”, in Charara, Hayan (ed) Inclined to Speak:

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