The Native Informant & Other Stories

by Ramzi M. Salti

The Native Informant & Other Stories is a collection of six short stories dealing with "unmentionable" aspects of Arab life in parts of the Arab world and in the West. Inspired by such modern writers as Alifa Rifaat, Nawal al-Sadawi, and Youssef Idris - authors who have, despite immeasurable odds, managed to emphasize subjects ranging from feminism to homosexuality in their works - these short stories attempt to further engage various social and political issues that remain, for the most part, largely ignored or silenced in modern Arabic literature. Most of the stories in The Native Informant & Other Stories operate on a dual level by addressing not only issues related to women, homosexuals, and victims of violence in southwest Asia, but also by examining the seemingly conflicting relationship between notions of Arabness, Islam, and the West. The collection thus aims at highlighting the plight of marginalized groups in Arab countries by broaching various issues on the social spectrum, ranging from religious intolerance, to the subjugation of women, to homophobia, to domestic violence, to Western and Eastern concepts of terrorism and neo/post coloniality, to the ethnic experience of being an Arab in the United States at a time when the media seems to be promulgating the negative stereotype of the Arab.

101 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1994

Reviews

[Bassamlebnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Native Informant" is a remarkable collection of short stories by the talented Jordanian writer Ramzi Salti who teaches Arabic at Stanford. It's about time to read good stories in English about the Middle-East that tackle culture, family issues, and sexuality BUT are written by a native person for a change. The libraries are full with books written by travelers or writers who haven't stepped a foot in the Middle-East. Their foreign books themed around sexuality in the Middle-East are as strange and exotic as 1001 Nights. Ramzi Salti has broken this cycle with his collection of brave, daring stories.

[Eric Dobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading each of the stories in Dr. Salti's book. Each narrative, whether set in the Arab world or in the West, provided me with new insight into the quest for an identity by many marginalized social elements in Arab countries. In this work, identity is not only conflicted but also fluid in nature. Thus, the characters seem to exist in a state that transcends eastern vs. western notions of identity, focusing instead on the plight of the subaltern subject in western as well as neo/post-colonial societies.

[Ramzi Salti · Rating 5 out of 5]

E-Book version of Ramzi Salti's "The Native Informant" is now available via:

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Native-Informa...

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[Ramzi Salti · Rating 5 out of 5]

E-Book available at https://play.google.com/store/books/d...