Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab-American Poetry

by Gregory Orfalea

Arab-American poetry is an especially rich, people-involved, passionate literature that has been spawned, at least until recently, in isolation from the American mainstream. This anthology reflects the current renaissance in the literature of what may be the latest ethnic community to assert itself. Twenty poets are represented in this collection, fifteen of them living, five of them women. They start with Ameen Rihani and Kahlil Gibran and include celebrated contemporaries who write in Arabic or English or both. Contributors: Kahlil Gibran o Ameen Rihani o Jamil Holway o Mikhail Naimy o Elia Abu Madi o Etel Adnan o D.H. Melhem o Samuel Hazo o Joseph Awad o Eugene Paul Nasser o H.S. (Sam) Hamod o Jack Marshall o Fawaz Turki o Doris Safie o Ben Bennani o Sharif Elmusa o Lawrence Joseph o Gregory Orfalea o Naomi Shihab Nye o Elmaz Abinader.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

336 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1988

About the author

Gregory Orfalea was born and raised in Los Angeles. He is the author of ten books, including Journey to the Sun: Junipero Serra’s Dream and the Founding of California, published in January 2014 by Scribner.

With degrees from Georgetown University and the University of Alaska, Orfalea has published ten books, including a history of his father’s unit in World War II, Messengers of the Lost Battalion, and Angeleno Days, a memoir of growing up in Los Angeles, which won the Arab American Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN USA Prize in Creative Nonfiction. He is also the author of a collection of short stories, The Man Who Guarded the Bomb, as well as the seminal study, The Arab Americans: A History.

Orfalea directed a writing program at the Claremont Colleges and has taught at several universities, including his alma mater, Georgetown University and California Lutheran University. For the past six years (2010-2015) Orfalea has been writer-in-residence at Westmont College in Santa Barbara and director of its Creators of California speakers series.

In 2013, Orfalea visited Turkey and Armenia with the University of Iowa International Writers Program and the US State Department.

Orfalea and his wife have three sons. He divides his time between Santa Barbara and Washington, DC.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uneven collection, but I am grateful to have been introduced to the work of Naomi Shihab Nye, Lawrence Joseph, and Elia Abu Madi.