Susan Muaddi Darraj's Blog, page 3

Children’s Chapter Book Series – Debuts January 2020!

 I’ve signed a four-book deal with Capstone Books for FARAH ROCKS, a children’s chapter book series about a Palestinian-American girl named Farah Hajjar. She’s smart, brave, and funny – look out for her in January 2020!

2018 USA Ford Fellow

I am grateful to USA Artists and the Ford Foundation for naming me as a member of the 2018 cohort. I am honored to be among 45 amazing artists from across the United States.

Sustainable Arts Foundation

I was thrilled to learn that I’ve been awarded a Sustainable Arts Foundation award! The list of all the 2017 awardees is available on their website.  SAF is an amazing organization, with a particular mission, “supporting artists and writers with families. Our mission is to provide financial awards to parents pursuing creative work. Too often, creative impulses are set aside to meet the wonderful, but pressing, demands of raising a family. The foundation’s goal is to encourage parents to continue pursuing their creative passion, and to rekindle it in those who may have let it slide.” I am grateful, as a mother of three young children, to have the Foundation’s support as I work on my next book.

Recommended Books by and about Arab Women

I am always asked for a list of books that are “must reads” by and about Arab women. I’m including a list below — it is an update of the list I usually hand out at my talks and readings. It is by no means complete! Email me if you have an addition or suggestion.

Abdulhadi, Rabab and Evelyn Asultany. Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging

Aboulela, Leila. The Translator and Minaret

AbuJaber, Diana. Arabian Jazz, Life Without a Recipe, The Language of Baklava,  and Crescent

Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate and A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America.

Barakat, Hoda. The Stone of Laughter

Faqir, Fadia. The Cry of the Dove and Pillars of Salt

Haddad, Joumana. I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman

Handal, Nathalie. The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology

Jarrar, Randa. Him, Me, Muhammad Ali and The Map of Home

Jensen, Kim. The Woman I Left Behind. 

Lalami, Laila. The Moor’s Account and Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

Maznavi, Nura and Ayesha Mattu. Love, Inshallah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women

Naber, Nadine. Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism

Serageldin, Samia. The Cairo House. 

One Maryland One Book Top Ten!

A Curious Land has been named a top-ten finalist in the One Maryland One Book Program!

The program’s 2017 theme is “Home & Belonging”. According to the Maryland Humanities Council, which sponsors the program, “Readers across Maryland suggested 140 unique titles via email and the Maryland Center for the Book Facebook page. Our committee narrowed the list to the top 10 and will select the top 3 titles in late January.”

 

Put Christ Back in Palestine

I’m interested (and amused) when Americans feel that “Christ is being removed from Christmas.” For example, expanding the winter holiday season to include non-Christian holidays, like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and even Ramadan when it falls in the winter, is somehow an assault on Christianity.

This time of the year, I see on the news and on my Facebook feed, stories and posts about customers who are angry about Starbucks coffee cup designs, or parents who are angry that their children’s schools are having a “holiday party” or a “winter concert” rather than a Christmas celebration.

We’re so deeply invested in defending Christ, it seems, in restoring him where he belongs.

I wonder if those same people know that they should think about perhaps putting Christ back in Palestine, the birthplace of the Savior and of Christianity itself.

Yes, it’s true – Jesus Christ lived and died in Palestine, and places like Bethlehem and Nazareth are not just towns in Pennsylvania. They are real cities that are the centers of Palestinian Christian life. All those places mentioned in the New Testament, such as the Galilee, are real places, in which Palestinian Arabs still live despite a brutal occupation that has lasted over 60 years.

My parents’ hometown, al-Taybeh, is the Biblical town of Ephraim. After raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus went to Ephraim to think and meditate:

Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim. (John 11:54)

Al-Taybeh, or Ephraim, is still a vibrant place, and its people and its several churches celebrate Christmas every year, along with the churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other towns that have Christian populations. In Ramallah, near al-Taybeh,  a large Christmas tree is erected every year, and this year it was named by the Huffington Post as one of the memorable Christmas tree displays in the world.

All of this is to say that the Middle East is more diverse than people realize. Palestinians are regularly depicted as terrorist and fanatics, out to destroy Israel. The truth is that the Palestinians have lived under a colonial occupation and have been struggling to liberate themselves from it — Muslims and Christians alike. In my collection, A Curious Land, there is a story titled, “Christmas in Palestine,” in which my main character returns to Palestine in the Christmas season and is confronted by the changes that have taken place politically since she left.

It would be refreshing for once to see American interested in restoring Christ historically. The historical Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem and in the hills of the Galilee, which are still in existence — they are not just ephemeral places without root, or just words delivered from a Sunday pulpit.

Palestinians are a wonderful, diverse, and progressive people. As Sandra Cisneros writes, in her beautiful poem, “homecoming,”  “ain’t like they say in the newspapers.”

Ruby’s Grant Awarded by the GBCA!

Many thanks to the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance for funding my new project, a novel titled Brotherly Love. The Ruby’s Awards are a special program in the Baltimore region that support many artists, writers, and filmmakers. How wonderful to live in a state that supports the arts! Special shout-out to fellow awardees, Andria Nacina Cole and Carla DuPree!

2016 American Book Awards – Acceptance Speech

Acceptance of 2016 American Book Award for A Curious Land: Stories from Home

October 30, 2016

San Francisco Jazz Center

It’s a pleasure to be here with you today. Thank you so much to the Before Columbus Foundation for this honor. This book took me eight  years to write, and I feel so grateful that my attempt to celebrate the voices of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans is being recognized with this award.

Palestinian-American literature is still growing as a genre, and I’m happy about that. Growing up, I had a hard time discussing my Palestinian heritage, mostly because people easily equated Palestine with things like terrorism. You could see it on their faces – I would say that I was Palestinian-American, and their expression would show: “Palestine… PLO…. terrorism.” That was it.

I had a college professor tell me once that there was no such thing as Palestinian people, that it was a “made up” nationality that Palestinians conveniently invented after 1948. This book is my answer to his comment, so many years later, because at 19 years old, I didn’t have the words.

And of course, as a kid I could never find Palestine on a map of the world — I still can’t — and say, “That’s Palestine. That’s where my parents came from. Right there.” That hurt in many ways, as if indeed it were something that wasn’t real.

Being a Palestinian Christian was also challenging, and still is. We get painted with the same “terrorism/ sharia law” brush as Muslim Americans. The ignorance astounds me sometimes. There is a weird disconnect from history on the part of Western Christians, who want to stereotype Arab Christians — this ancient community — people who come from places like Nazareth (Nasra), Bethlehem (Beit Lahem). They don’t understand our community but they’re ready to stereotype us.

I had a woman ask me once if I was Muslim, and I said, no that I was secular but my family was Christian, and she looked stunned and said, “Did they convert?” And I said, “No, you did.”

And of course, the elections are just a week away, and we’re breathing in the toxic air of this climate. We’re seeing more than ever, that the denigration of Arabs and Muslims is an efficient tool for politicians and some media personalities, to get noticed. To get a boost in the polls and the ratings. For some candidates, it is their entire platform, along with the denigration of our fellow Americans.

I’ve learned that, in order to change the narrative, you have to seize the narrative. And that is why this award is so special. Palestinian and Arab writers have been seizing the narrative for some time now, and the Before Columbus Foundation is one of the few organizations that has always recognized them.

Thank you to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), which awarded my book the Grace Paley Prize, which led to its publication, and to the members of my writing group – four wonderful women who read and edited every word of the original manuscript.

Thanks to my parents, who reminded me that you can love your culture but also question it, to my children, who are my source of joy, and to my husband, Elias Darraj, who has supported my writing for the last sixteen years, before I ever published anything or won anything.

Thanks to the Foundation, and to all of you. Congratulations to my fellow award winners. It’s my honor to be here with you.

 

Palestine Book Awards — Shortlist

A Curious Land: Stories from Home has been shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards! Read about the awards and the other finalists here.

MSAC Grant Awarded

Many thanks to the Maryland State Arts Council for awarding me an Individual Artist Award!  Proud to live in a state that supports literature and the arts!