Writers Backstage كٌّتاب خلف الكواليس

I recorded this interview at the beginning of Ramadan, and I'm so glad that it will be published at last. I believe that research and publications are important and are worth paying attention to if you are pursuing your higher studies or simply completing your bachelor degree. In this interview we look at the process of publication and how to find that academic space where you can voice your argument and publish. 

Dr Deborah M. Mix is Professor of English at Ball State University, where she teaches courses in American literature. She is the author of "A Vocabulary of Thinking": Gertrude Stein and Contemporary North American Women's Experimental Writing (Iowa 2007) and the co-editor, with Logan Esdale, of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein (MLA 2018). Her essays on American poetry have appeared in collections like Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge 2020), Approaches to Teaching Baraka's Dutchman (MLA 2018), and The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets (Cambridge 2016) as well as in journals including Contemporary Women's Writing, Studies in the Humanities, and American Literature.

In this episode Mona and I cruise over different Arab/ Muslim writing genres. I read a part from "Avenger, Mutant, or Allah: A Short Evolution of the Depiction of Muslims in Marvel Comics" by Nicholaus Pumphrey and then I highlight 4 important muslim characters that are very popular today in comics. Some of the characters I talk about are Soorya Qadir (Dust) , Ms Marvel (Kamala Khan), Kahina Eskandari (Iron Butterfly), and Qahera.  

Mona takes us back to the genre of the novel highlighting three critically acclaimed novels by Diana Abu-Jaber which are, Crescent (2003), Arabian Jazz (1993), and culinary memoir The Language of Baklava (2005).

Can't believe that we have started our second season for this wonderful podcast, Writers Back Stage. In this 1st episode of the second season, Mona and I carry to talk about issues related to Arab American literature, like the most important themes, as Mona reminds listeners of Gibran Khalil Gibran, the Godfather of Mahjar and Arab American literature. I turn to an article by Barbra Nimri Azizi on Third World Feminism. Barbara Nimri Aziz is an anthropologist and journalist based in New York most famous for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. 

“We  only  saw  it  from  a  distance  [her  Arabic  heritage]”,  Helen  Hatab  Samhan explains. “It was all very foreign to us”. It’s true that Helen’s ex-tended  family  maintained  close  ties  and  that  her  mother  continued  to  cook Syrian food. But that was it (Bint  Arab:  Arab  and  Arab  American  Women  in  the  United  States, by Evelyn Shakir) 

In this Episode Mona and I talk about the importance of food in Arab American writings by focusing on the one critical article "Our Roots in the Mezze: The Politics of Food and Arab-American Women Poets" by Nathalie Handal.

Handal concludes that "[...] food  has  many  meanings.  It  can  be  a  symbolic  re-presentation  of  someone,  of  a  culture  or  an  emotion,  or  it  might  be  used  to  express,  relay  a  message  or  set  the  stage  for  a  love  scene  or  any  event.  But  beyond  that  we  all  have  an  intimate  relationship  with  food  that  never  ends.  Food  is  its  own  language  and  encompasses  our  entirety  –  our  roots,  our  old  and  new  identity  and  culture,  our  bodies  and minds, our loves and desires, ourselves" (155).

In this episode I interview Dr Emily Ruth Rutter. Dr Rutter is an Associate Professor of English at Ball State University. She is the author of Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line (University Press of Mississippi, 2018), The Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical Celebrity in American Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 2018), and the forthcoming Black Celebrity: Contemporary Representations of Postbellum Athletes and Artists (University of Delaware Press, Fall 2021). Along with Tiffany Austin, Sequoia Maner, and darlene anita scott, she co-edited Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge, 2020). Her numerous essays have been published in African American Review, Aethlon, and MELUS, among other journals.

In the episode we focus on possible definitions of ethnic American literature, children's literature, and national sports. I specifically focus on Dr Rutters book Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line (University Press of Mississippi, 2018. Enjoy :) 

نستضيف في حلقتنا اليوم الدكتور إبراهيم عزيزي، أستاذ الادب الإنجليزي بجامعة الملك سعود، حاصل علي شهادة الدكتوراة من جامعة انديانا بنسيلفينيا، وله العديد من الاوراق  مثل "هوية السرد في الرواية الأميركية العربية" يناقش الدكتور التحولات التي تخص الهوية العربية الامريكية وتمثيلها في السرد و في الرواية بشكل خاص.

نناقش في هذه الحلقة بعض الأسئلة المهمة التي تتعلق بموجات الهجرة الي امريكا الشمالية وكيف شكلت هذه الهجرات كتابات الامريكان العرب واضافت الي ادبهم كمجموعة عرقية لا تقل اهمية عن المجموعات العرقية المتواجدة منذ القدم تحت مظلة الادب الأمريكي  

 وايضا ننظر اخر الحلقة في اهمية تمثيل هذه الاعلام علي شاشات السينما وننقاش مدى وفاء شاشات السينما لهذه الأعمال . 

In our fifth episode, we focus on  Arab American writers and poets and their reactions to traumatic events like 9/11. Hayat Bedaiwi looks at Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet: To Any Would-Be Terrorists, and provides a reading from the letter itself, with a focus on the idea of how Arab American writers had to defend themselves and fight wrong associations that stuck to Arabs and their heritage after the events. 

 Mona AlBalawi talks about Lisa Suhair Majaj and her poem “Keep your eyes on the colonizer’s maps”—“Guidelines”. Lisa Suhair Majaj is author of Geographies of Light (Del Sol Press Poetry Prize winner) and co-editor of Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women's Novels (Syracuse University Press), Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist (McFarland Publishing) and Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers (Garland/Routledge). Her writing, which includes poetry, creative nonfiction, critical essays, children’s writing and more, has been translated into several languages.  Guidelines sheds light on issues of Arab identity, belonging and immigration. The three poem stanza's ask the reader to think about different situations where their Arabness might be questioned, but it also includes the non-Arab reader in helping them understand the struggles and bias they face because they are of Arab decent,
 

In this episode, we focus on different ways and genres that Arab Americans used to express their identity and struggles. Naomi Shihab Nye, a very accomplished Arab American poet, uses the image of the fig tree to recall how her roots are a part of her identity, and one can feel that her father and his attachment to Palestine has a great effect on her as a poet. Huda Fehmy is also a comic strip artist who uses cartoons and, as I call it the comic novel genre, to express the conversation happening about the hijab, being a muslim American and how hard it is to explain to others what the Hijab is and why she chooses to wear it. Normally, Muslim women always get comments on their hijab and the way they wear it, and how it is sometimes considered as an exotic piece. She uses humor to counteract these negative influences and maybe psychologically distressing events that happen to her on a daily basis. whether she is ordering from a restaurant, or just walking outside, her hijab is always a character in her comic strips, which she tries to give life to and validate at the end of the day.