Susan Muaddi Darraj's Blog, page 2
July 16, 2019
A Black Ariel? Must Be a Whole New World
Susan’s article in Pop Matters Magazine about the news that actor Halle Bailey would be playing the role of Ariel in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid — and a commentary on the racial backlash on social media.
July 11, 2019
Book review of Rayyan Al-Shawaf’s debut novel
Check out my review, published today at PopMatters, of Rayyan Al-Shawaf’s debut novel When All Else Fails.
June 27, 2019
Article about “The Inheritance of Exile”
Please check out “Breaking the Script: The Generational Conjuncture in the Anglophone Palestinian Novel,” an article in the June 2019 issue of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, by Maurice Ebileeni (University of Haifa). He examines my first novel, The Inheritance of Exile (2007), and concludes that “Darraj’s novels generate new challenging cosmopolitan dimensions to the Palestinian narrative.”
June 7, 2019
Inside HigherEd Op-Ed on Community College Stigma
Check out my op-ed, “No Shame in Our Game: Stop Maligning Community Colleges,” part of the Conditionally Accepted column, in Inside Higher Ed Magazine.
May 2, 2019
April 30, 2019: The First International Day of Tatreez & Palestinian Culture
Building on the success of #TweetYourThobe, I’ve partnered with the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC to declare an International Day of Tatreez & Palestinian Culture, to be celebrated every April 30th. You can read more about it here, as well as check out an article I wrote for +972 Magazine.
April 19, 2019
Recommendations of Books by Writers of Arab Descent!
I’m always being asked for book recommendations, so I have assembled a personal list of some of my favorite books in English by writers of Arab descent.
By no means is it a complete list — rather, I hope it will help you find even more writers and books that you enjoy. Think of it as merely the beginning!
Poetry
AbiNader, Elmaz. This House My Bones.
Abraham, George. Birthright.
Adnan, Etel. The Arab Apocalypse.
Charara, Hayan. Something Sinister, The Sadness of Others, and The Alchemist’s Diary
Chatti, Leila. Tunsiya Amrikiya.
ElHillo, Safia. The January Children.
Halaby, Laila. My Name on His Tongue.
Hammad, Suheir. Born Palestinian, Born Black.
Handal, Nathalie. The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology and Poet in Andalucia.
Hashem Beck, Zeina. Louder Than Hearts and To Live in Autumn
Helal, Marwa. I Am Made to Leave I Am Made to Return and Invasive Species
Joudah, Fady. Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance and textu
Kanazi, Remi. Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine
Majaj, Lisa Suhair. Geographies of Light.
Mattawa, Khaled. Tocqueville.
Metres, Philip. Sand Opera.
Nye, Shihab Naomi. 19 Varieties of Gazelle, Words Under the Words
Rizkallah, Jess. the magic my body becomes
Shaheen, Glenn. Carnivalia.
Shehabi, Deema. Thirteen Departures from the Moon.
Shenoda, Matthew. Somewhere Else and Tahrir Suite
Tuffaha, Lena Khalaf. Water and Salt.
Twal, Peter. Our Earliest Tattoos.
Zeinati, Rewa. Nietzsche’s Camel Must Die.
Fiction
Aboulela, Leila. The Translator and Minaret
AbuJaber, Diana. Arabian Jazz and Crescent
Abulhawa, Susan. Mornings in Jenin and The Blue Between Sky and Water.
Adnan, Etel. Sitt Marie Rose.
Alameddine, Rabih. The Hakawati, I, the Divine, and An Unnecessary Woman
Alyan, Hala. Salt Houses and The Twenty-Nine Years.
Barakat, Hoda. The Stone of Laughter
Faqir, Fadia. The Cry of the Dove and Pillars of Salt
Geha, Joseph. Lebanese Blonde.
Habra, Hedy. Flying Carpets.
Halaby, Laila. Once in a Promised Land and West of the Jordan
Hammad, Isabelle. The Parisian.
Hassib, Rajia. In the Language of Miracles and A Pure Heart
Jabbour, Hala Deeb. Woman of Nazareth.
Jarrar, Randa. Him, Me, Muhammad Ali and The Map of Home
Jensen, Kim. The Woman I Left Behind.
Joukhadar, Zeyn. The Map of Salt and Stars.
Kahf, Mohja. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.
Lalami, Laila. The Moor’s Account, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and The Other Americans
Mahmoud, Lena. Amreekiya.
Matar, Hisham. In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance.
Messud, Claire. The Woman Upstairs.
Mustafah, Sahar. Code of the West; The Beauty of Your Face (forthcoming)
Serageldin, Samia. The Cairo House.
Tynes, Natasha. They Called Me Wyatt.
Yunis, Alia. The Night Counter.
Nonfiction
AbiNader, Elmaz. Children of the Roojme.
AbuJaber, Diana. The Language of Baklava.
Al-Marashi, Huda. First Comes Marriage.
Bayoumi, Moustafa. How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? and This Muslim American Life
Haddad, Joumana. I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman
Hayoun, Massoud. When We Were Arabs.
Kaldas, Pauline. Looking Both Ways: An Egyptian-American Journey
Malek, Alia. The Home That Was Our Country and Amreeka
al-Maria, Sophia. The Girl Who Fell to Earth.
Maznavi, Nura and Ayesha Mattu. Love, Inshallah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women
Nader, Ralph. The Seventeen Traditions.
Nimri Aziz, Barbara. Swimming Up the Tigris.
Said, Najla. Looking for Palestine.
Shakir, Evelyn. Teaching Arabs, Writing Self.
Zahr, Amer. Being Palestinian Makes Me Smile.
For Children
Charara, Hayan. The Three Lucys.
Nye, Shihab Naomi. Habibi and The Turtle of Oman
Wakim Dennis, Yvonne. A Kid’s Guide to Arab American History.
April 15, 2019
Arab American Heritage Month
Here’s a fun piece I wrote for Arab American Heritage Month, celebrated every April. It’s about the meaning of traditional foods in immigrant communities, and in the essay, I share my family recipe for hummus!
March 26, 2019
Rose Nader Award Acceptance Speech
On March 2, 2019, I was deeply honored to be the recipient of the Rose Nader Award, which is given every year by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) to “an individual with unwavering dedication and commitment to values of equality and justice.” The Rose Nader award is presented by Ralph and Claire Nader in honor of their mother. The award ceremony took place in Washington DC, at the ADC annual gala and conference.
TEXT of SPEECH:
Thank you so much to the ADC, to Nabil Mohamad and Samer Khalaf, and especially to the Nader family. What a beautiful tribute to the work of Rose Nader, a woman who modeled activism for her own children and her community. I’m so honored to be the recipient of this award in her name by your family.
I’d like to dedicate it, in that vein, to my own mother, Alice Muaddi. She is my role model. I have three children of my own, and if I can be half as good as mother as she is, I’ll be doing a great job.
I just want to recognize all the Arab mothers in this audience. They are some of the strongest people I know. When you’re a young person growing up between two cultures, some people in your life can help you by building a bridge. But there are other people in your life who become the bridge. It’s been my experience that Arab moms become the bridge: they stretch as far as they need to stretch, they work as hard as they need to work, so we can reach the other side.
Rose Nader did this with her children, my mother did it for me, and I know so many of you are the ones who make sure that your children feel proud of their Arab heritage — and you do it in a society that, while it’s getting better, is still a hostile environment for Arab Americans.
If you’re like me in that you grew up in America, you probably have a story you can tell about confronting racism. And it’s so hard… I think about how I often felt immediately defensive when someone wanted to know my ethnicity — as a kid, and as a teenager, I got ready for the questions, and I braced myself to hear and to correct a lot of stereotypes. I know them all, and I’m sure you do too.
But like many of you and like the ADC’s theme this year, I am working to seize the narrative, to reclaim the narrative, because too many times, our stories have been written by others.
For example, recently, we launched the #tweetyourthobe campaign. I know many of the people here participated in that campaign. It was a lot of fun, like a big online fashion show of thobes. It was important to support Congresswoman Tlaib and other women in Congress by telling that story of our culture ourselves.
By the way, our campaign is partnering with the Museum of the Palestinian People, which opens in May, to hold an annual celebration, an International Day of Palestinian tatreez and culture. Save the date — April 30th. We’re going to take over social media on that day every year and tweet Palestinian culture all over the world.
Social media can provide us with so many new ways to seize the narrative. And it’s especially important that we do it for our children. As Rose said, I’m currently writing a children’s book series, Farah Rocks, for elementary and middle school children, that stars a Palestinian American girl. I was inspired to write it because my daughter wondered one day why there were so few books that featured Palestinian girls. And I said, “When I was your age, I asked the same question!” That’s too long.
There is a “mirror and window” theory that we talk about in children’s literature. Kids books serve as both a mirror and a window. They provide children a window into another culture, but for readers who are from that culture, the books serve as a mirror. It’s important that children see themselves in books, but our children don’t see themselves often. We’re going to change that, and I’m excited to be part of that effort.
Thank you again for this award. I’m deeply honored. I look forward to working with all of you, with ADC, together, to continue to change the way our people are represented in this country.
January 31, 2019
January 6, 2019
#TweetYourThobe Campaign Goes Viral
On January 3, 2019, I launched a #TweetYourThobe social media campaign to celebrate the election of Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) to the House of Representatives, as well as to educate Americans about the artistic legacy of Palestinian tatreez, which decorates the thobes (dresses) that Palestinian women wear. The campaign went viral, much to my delight. Check out The New York Times‘ coverage of this celebration of Palestinian culture.
The moment was also captured by CNN, the Huffington Post, PRI International, and NPR’s Weekend Edition, among other news outlets.
