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E-mail da Shahrazad
E-mail da Shahrazad è l'esordio letterario di Mohja Kahf, pubblicato originariamente nel 2003. La raccolta, prima traduzione italiana di una sua opera, è nel suo complesso una riflessione ironica, amara e appassionata sulla memoria, le radici e le difficili prospettive della società multiculturale. La cifra stilistica dell'autrice, in grado di raccogliere le differenti e complementari eredità di scrittrici come Wisława Szymborska e Annie Ernaux, si distingue per un'efficace e comunicativa alternanza di registri fra dramma, commedia e improvvisi slanci lirici, tenuti insieme da una vivida capacità narrativa e immaginifica.
Traduzione e prefazione a cura di Mirella Vallone, ricercatrice di Lingua e Letterature Angloamericane presso il Dipartimento di Lettere – Lingue, Letterature e Civiltà Antiche e Moderne dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia. I suoi interessi di ricerca riguardano la letteratura dell’epoca coloniale, le tematiche della identità, della memoria, della diaspora e della emigrazione, e la letteratura delle minoranze etniche. Ha lavorato sull’opera di Henry James, analizzandone il rapporto tra romanzo e teatro. Per i tipi di Aguaplano ha pubblicato il saggio Ciò che si muove ai margini. Identità e riscrittura della storia nazionale in Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldúa e Bharati Mukherjee (2013).
Traduzione e prefazione a cura di Mirella Vallone, ricercatrice di Lingua e Letterature Angloamericane presso il Dipartimento di Lettere – Lingue, Letterature e Civiltà Antiche e Moderne dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia. I suoi interessi di ricerca riguardano la letteratura dell’epoca coloniale, le tematiche della identità, della memoria, della diaspora e della emigrazione, e la letteratura delle minoranze etniche. Ha lavorato sull’opera di Henry James, analizzandone il rapporto tra romanzo e teatro. Per i tipi di Aguaplano ha pubblicato il saggio Ciò che si muove ai margini. Identità e riscrittura della storia nazionale in Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldúa e Bharati Mukherjee (2013).
184 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2003
10 people are currently reading
594 people want to read
About the author
Mohja Kahf
15 books96 followersPoet and scholar Mohja Kahf was born in Damascus, Syria. Her family moved to the United States in 1971, and Kahf grew up in the Midwest. She earned a PhD in comparative literature from Rutgers University and is the author of the poetry collections Hagar Poems (2016) and Emails from Scheherazad (2003) and the novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006).
Kahf’s experiences growing up in the United States shaped her perceptions of the differences and similarities between the cultures of her home and adopted countries. Her poetry is an amalgam of both Syrian and American influences; Lisa Suhair Majaj commented in ArteNews that Kahf’s work “draws on American colloquialisms and Quranic suras; it is informed not only by American free verse … but also by a lush energy that draws on the heart of the Arabic oral tradition and Arabic poetry.” Kahf sometimes satirizes stereotypes about Muslim women—she has tackled hairstyles, sex, and clothing. In Emails from Scheherazad, she locates Scheherazad in 21st-century Hackensack, New Jersey. Majaj observed that Kahf “unsettles assumptions about Scheherazad while also emphasizing aspects of the traditional tale that often get overlooked in western portrayals.” Kahf has also written about the hardships of immigration; The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf depicts a Muslim girl’s coming of age in Indiana.
Kahf co-writes a column on sexuality for the website Muslim Wake Up. Her nonfiction work includes Western Representation of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (1999).
Kahf is a professor of English at the University of Arkansas.
Kahf’s experiences growing up in the United States shaped her perceptions of the differences and similarities between the cultures of her home and adopted countries. Her poetry is an amalgam of both Syrian and American influences; Lisa Suhair Majaj commented in ArteNews that Kahf’s work “draws on American colloquialisms and Quranic suras; it is informed not only by American free verse … but also by a lush energy that draws on the heart of the Arabic oral tradition and Arabic poetry.” Kahf sometimes satirizes stereotypes about Muslim women—she has tackled hairstyles, sex, and clothing. In Emails from Scheherazad, she locates Scheherazad in 21st-century Hackensack, New Jersey. Majaj observed that Kahf “unsettles assumptions about Scheherazad while also emphasizing aspects of the traditional tale that often get overlooked in western portrayals.” Kahf has also written about the hardships of immigration; The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf depicts a Muslim girl’s coming of age in Indiana.
Kahf co-writes a column on sexuality for the website Muslim Wake Up. Her nonfiction work includes Western Representation of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (1999).
Kahf is a professor of English at the University of Arkansas.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
December 5, 2016
What I love the most about poetry is that it provides a powerful voice for those who are often left voiceless.
Mohja Kahf has proven in this collection to be one of the most vibrant voices.
She is a dynamic, feisty writer who insists on critiquing as well as celebrating her own multiple culture contexts, whether it is Arab, Muslim or American.
She writes as a Muslim feminist whose project is to dismantle the rigid stereotypes that so often constrain Muslim women.
What is interesting about her poetry is that you can feel it clearly as a form of resistance. She believes that storytelling and words gives you power.
Hijab Scene # 7
No, I’m not bald under the scarf
No, I'm not from that country
where women can't drive cars
No, I would not like to defect
I'm already American
But thank you for offering
What else do you need to know
relevant to my buying insurance,
opening a bank account,
reserving a seat on a flight?
Yes, I speak English
Yes, I carry explosives
They're called words
And if you don't get up
Off your assumptions
They're going to blow you away.
Her voice takes on particular power in poems that explore the cultural schism experienced by the children of immigrants. She interrogates ,through language, the Arab and American identity.
Here's a sneak peak:
Men Kill Me
Men kill me
How they think the sun is all for them
and the water is all for them
How they accept the wind at their backs
as if the wind was the handmaid of their father
and they inherited her without a murmur
Men kill me
How they think the earth of green and gold and God
is all for them
How they feel generous in leaving one small spot
between four walls for all the women in the world
How they swallow all the meadows’ wild color upon color
and feel grand if they remember to bring
one red rose for a woman
Men kill me
How, if a woman takes one ray of the sun
or cuts a river through the water,
they accuse her of violating
the Copernican order,
of upsetting the orbits of the planets
and the orbits of the pilgrims at the Ka’ba
Men kill me
How they forget that the world is resting
on the back of a tortoise
and the tortoise is poised on a spider
and the spider is dangling like a drop of sweat
from the temple of the woman scrubbing the floor
under the feet of Copernicus and the pilgrims at the Ka’ba.
The Marvelous Women
All women speak two languages:
the language of men
and the language of silent suffering.
Some women speak a third,
the language of queens.
They are marvelous
and they are my friends.
I really loved this collection. Very heart-touching and empowering.
Mohja Kahf has proven in this collection to be one of the most vibrant voices.
She is a dynamic, feisty writer who insists on critiquing as well as celebrating her own multiple culture contexts, whether it is Arab, Muslim or American.
She writes as a Muslim feminist whose project is to dismantle the rigid stereotypes that so often constrain Muslim women.
What is interesting about her poetry is that you can feel it clearly as a form of resistance. She believes that storytelling and words gives you power.
Hijab Scene # 7
No, I’m not bald under the scarf
No, I'm not from that country
where women can't drive cars
No, I would not like to defect
I'm already American
But thank you for offering
What else do you need to know
relevant to my buying insurance,
opening a bank account,
reserving a seat on a flight?
Yes, I speak English
Yes, I carry explosives
They're called words
And if you don't get up
Off your assumptions
They're going to blow you away.
Her voice takes on particular power in poems that explore the cultural schism experienced by the children of immigrants. She interrogates ,through language, the Arab and American identity.
Here's a sneak peak:
Men Kill Me
Men kill me
How they think the sun is all for them
and the water is all for them
How they accept the wind at their backs
as if the wind was the handmaid of their father
and they inherited her without a murmur
Men kill me
How they think the earth of green and gold and God
is all for them
How they feel generous in leaving one small spot
between four walls for all the women in the world
How they swallow all the meadows’ wild color upon color
and feel grand if they remember to bring
one red rose for a woman
Men kill me
How, if a woman takes one ray of the sun
or cuts a river through the water,
they accuse her of violating
the Copernican order,
of upsetting the orbits of the planets
and the orbits of the pilgrims at the Ka’ba
Men kill me
How they forget that the world is resting
on the back of a tortoise
and the tortoise is poised on a spider
and the spider is dangling like a drop of sweat
from the temple of the woman scrubbing the floor
under the feet of Copernicus and the pilgrims at the Ka’ba.
The Marvelous Women
All women speak two languages:
the language of men
and the language of silent suffering.
Some women speak a third,
the language of queens.
They are marvelous
and they are my friends.
I really loved this collection. Very heart-touching and empowering.
February 7, 2017
[Days passed
in another country, like photographs
with our silhouettes cut off, where one day
we would fit back in, we thought.]
This is a wonderful anthology.
Kahf was really honest dealing with the identity crisis which Arab-Americans suffer from - Arab-Muslim women specifically.
Throughout her poems she fought for freedom, and just like Sheherazad, Kahf used words (poetry) to protect herself as a representative of the Arab-Muslim women, and to protect her sisters from the dishonest orientalist representation of them in western mainstream culture.
She provided a voice to the absent, marginalized, and voiceless women in diaspora.
[Days passed
in another country, like photographs
with our silhouettes cut off, where one day
we would fit back in, we thought.]
This is a wonderful anthology.
Kahf was really honest dealing with the identity crisis which Arab-Americans suffer from - Arab-Muslim women specifically.
Throughout her poems she fought for freedom, and just like Sheherazad, Kahf used words (poetry) to protect herself as a representative of the Arab-Muslim women, and to protect her sisters from the dishonest orientalist representation of them in western mainstream culture.
She provided a voice to the absent, marginalized, and voiceless women in diaspora.
September 11, 2021
Gorgeously lush and lyrical, a beautiful reminder of the memories of immigrant children. Evocative of classical Arabic lyricism, melded with modern poetry in English. Mohja Kahf's writing is always beautiful, and I was not disappointed with this collection of poetry!
April 26, 2019
E-mail da Shahrazad di Mohja Kahf (Aguaplano) è un libro che mi ha stupito. Al BookPride di Milano, secondo me i ragazzi dello stand si ricordano ancora quel momento, ho visto il libro e sono rimasta colpita dalla copertina (Nel tentativo di prenderne uno in mano ho rischiato di buttare giù gli scaffali che mostravano le copie).Mi sono approcciata con un po' di paura a questo libro perché quelle di Mohja Kahf sono poesie, per me un mondo sconosciuto. Eppure c'è qualcosa di diverso in questa raccolta. Come ho scritto qualche giorno fa, in E-mail da Shahrazad ci sono un sacco di contaminazioni e il linguaggio non fa certo eccezione. Abbiamo l'impressione a volte di leggere delle mail, altre di assistere a una conversazione e altre ancora mi ricordano le parole di una canzone. L'impressione poi, di ritrovarsi ne Le mille e una notte è persistente. Queste premesse ci sono anche nella prefazione curata dalla traduttrice Mirella Vallone.Accanto ad ogni poesia è presente il testo in inglese (il mio purtroppo è troppo arrugginito per gustarmi anche la versione originale).L'autrice è siriana ma vive negli Stati Uniti. Una duplice condizione difficile da spiegare per chi non la vive. Apparterrà sempre alla sua terra di origine ma al tempo stesso sarà "troppo americana" per tornare e in America è troppo siriana per essere statunitense.Ad avermi colpito è stata soprattutto la prima poesia, La polvere del viaggiatore, che forse è la mia preferita. Mi piace immaginare la viaggiatrice cinese che sogna di tornare a casa, la mamma di Mohja che scuote le sciarpe lasciando che la polvere del viaggiatore finisca addosso ai figli, alle altre persone.
RECENSIONE: https://www.lalettricecontrocorrente....
RECENSIONE: https://www.lalettricecontrocorrente....
March 18, 2024
What a marvelous poet! I've memorized some of her poems, including this one which captures the essence of Ramadan perfectly 🤣:
Break a Fast
Your lips are dark, my love,
and fleshy, like a date
And night is honeyslow
in coming, long to wait
I have fasted, darling,
daylong all Ramadan
but your mouth —so sweet,
so near —the hours long!
Grant but one taste —one kiss!
You know what good reward
feeders of fasters gain
from our clement Lord
See how the fruits are ripe
and ready, O servant of God
Kiss me —it's time, it's time!
And let us earn reward
Break a Fast
Your lips are dark, my love,
and fleshy, like a date
And night is honeyslow
in coming, long to wait
I have fasted, darling,
daylong all Ramadan
but your mouth —so sweet,
so near —the hours long!
Grant but one taste —one kiss!
You know what good reward
feeders of fasters gain
from our clement Lord
See how the fruits are ripe
and ready, O servant of God
Kiss me —it's time, it's time!
And let us earn reward
Read
April 3, 2008I taught this in Other Voices, and it went best of all the volumes of poetry. It's a fantastic volume!
December 11, 2008
The poetry in this collection is truly powerful. Kahf's images and the rawness behind her statements are amazing.
October 25, 2023
I’m usually not a huge poetry reader, but damn. Kahf uses such precise language to describe the culture shock many immigrants endure upon arriving to America. The way she depicts racism/micro aggressions targeted towards Muslims is incredibly powerful. I loved that most of all, this poetry collection was a story of self love and acceptance, which Kahf ties together in the end. This book has left me with a lot to think about. Mainly, the Islamophobia endured by Muslim Americans, as well as, an opportunity to reflect on myself as to whether or not I’ve unintentionally carried any of these biases. I can’t help but make connections to present day Palestinians and the genocide their people are enduring as we speak. Books like these are incredibly important and I’d love to read more Muslim individuals work/ see more Muslim authors sharing their stories.
March 6, 2019
Last semester I based one of my seminar papers partly on another of Mohja Kahf's poetry collections, HAGAR POEMS. I loved that book for its imaginative portrayal of the figure of Hagar/Hajar, and for the warm and funny and startling things it had to say about the immigrant experience and religion and God and the ways in which people do or don't relate to each other. This is a much earlier collection of Kahf's, the poems here having been written between 1983 and 2001. The themes are similar - ancient women imagined into the present day, exile, simultaneous frustration with and longing for religion - but the ideas aren't as focused and the images and language aren't as memorable as they become in HAGAR POEMS. The best poems here are the ones in which Kahf confronts global human rights issues, notably birth defects caused by the United States' use of radioactive bombs during the Gulf War, or the grief of being a homeless refugee in an unfamiliar country. I'm sure I'll read more of Kahf's books, and I enjoyed reading this one, but it ended up mostly feeling like early practice for ideas later perfected in her poems about Hagar.
July 17, 2020
As someone who is from a different culture and race, certain unfamiliar words in the book make me look it up on the internet that leads me to gain new knowledge about the culture. Kahf also has successfully highlighted the struggles that muslim women often face in which as a muslim woman I could relate to. Overall, the poems are impactful.
November 20, 2020
Some of these poems are sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued observations about American life as a Muslim woman. Some are more lyrical, and I appreciate the ones about the immigrant experience. I am not the right audience for some of the list verses, because I don’t know the names or the places. Like a few of the poems that are inward and personal, they seem like a diary to which I don’t own the key.
October 8, 2018
Wonderful short poems, by the author of "The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf."
October 3, 2019
A beautiful hymn to multicultural life from a Syrian American who feels deeply and sees clearly.
October 25, 2019
Impressive and courageous poems from a young female Syrian poet. Very good.
May 7, 2020
Edito in Italia da Aguaplano
January 26, 2021
I too think that keffiyehs are sexy
July 23, 2021
La portada y el título 5 stars
November 13, 2022
i loved the title poem and the blending of liminal spaces the author expresses. this is the first poetry book i’ve ever read so it’s been a whole new experience!
November 15, 2022
um wow very beautiful very powerful words.
December 30, 2022
Very, very good collection of poems.
My rating of this book is 4.5
My rating of this book is 4.5
October 22, 2020
“Tell me who ate the cherries. / They were in a small bowl in the back of the refrigerator. / They were for me, because / Syria remembers. / I was / sure of it.”
March 5, 2017
My stars are based on my own experience of how much I enjoyed the book, but overall, I would give this five stars for quality. Kahf's writing is fantastic because it opens up multiple topics of discussion while simply telling her story through well-written poetry. Reading her poems taught me to open up my world, not only to a genre that I don't normally enjoy, but to seeing things through the perspective of a Muslim immigrant. The only critique that I have is that Kahf uses a lot of sexual references in her poems, especially those of a feminist flavor, which i felt was in poor taste.
February 20, 2015
Kahf's poetry is what I think of when I think of poetry - lyrical, yet still accessible; dealing with complex and personal issues in a poignant, thought-provoking way; enjoyable to read. While I am not Syrian or Muslim, I am an immigrant and I saw some of my own experiences and emotions in Kahf's semi-autobigraphical writing, the loneliness and confusion and richness of belonging to several places at once, always missing the other. I love the empowerment in her words, the uplifting of women, one's personal relationship with the Divine. I love her humor and her sadness, her honesty. This is a near-perfect poetry collection, and may be one that will take permanent residence on my bookshelves.
January 22, 2011
"It is my fate / like this, like this, to kiss / the creases around the eyes and the eyes / that they may recognize each other..." - Fayetteville as in Fate
Really good as political speech. Not my favorite type of poetry, but the words do other work for to which directness and clarity are well suited and I enjoyed them.
Really good as political speech. Not my favorite type of poetry, but the words do other work for to which directness and clarity are well suited and I enjoyed them.
August 8, 2012
A surprisingly accessible (Note: I generally avoid poetry) collection of poems, -some stronger than others-, about subjects such as immigration, womanhood, war, etc. from the perspective of a Syrian-born author.
August 13, 2014
Poems by a Syrian-American woman. At first I thought they were just okay, covering familiar hyphenated-American turf. But as the collection goes on, the poems turn toward issues of gender and politics, and they become biting, tough, and often hilarious. Count me as a fan.
December 3, 2015
I really liked this collection of poetry! I read it for an Arab American Lit class, but I'm interested in reading more of her writing beyond this.
I actually ended up writing a short story using lines from her poem Email from Scheherazad and the process was intriguing.
I actually ended up writing a short story using lines from her poem Email from Scheherazad and the process was intriguing.
November 15, 2011
A beautiful collection of modern poetry that reflects the complexities of our time as well as the immigrant's struggle with identity, ignorance, and intolerance.
January 30, 2012
Very accessible volume of poetry that nonetheless explores the questions of religion, gender, race, etc.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews