Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American FictionAn Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction

by Pauline Kaldas (Editor/Contributor), Khaled Mattawa (Editor)

In The Thousand and One Nights it is ShahrazadAa's sister, Dinarzad, who each night asks for a story. This collection of twenty-four modern tales by eighteen authors offers up a mix of previously published and new works, creating a literary road map to Arab American literature today.
Here authors of Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Egyptian, and Libyan descent, some with established reputations, others new young writers, tell tales about Muslims and Christians, recent immigrants and fully assimilated Americans, teenagers and grandmothers, guerillas and peaceniks, professors, housewives, grocers, bookies, those who long for their homeland, and those who refuse to speak Arabic. A number of the stories center on conflicts between immigrants and their American-born children. Others wrestle openly with topics such as in-group stereotyping, domestic violence, familial discord, and other difficult issues. But what sets this literature apart from other ethnic literatures is its tendency to keep an eye on the overseas political situation. By turns sassy or lyrical, biting or humorous, always moving, the stories in this collection are good reading and an important contribution to the body of ethnic American literature.

Contents:

How we are bound by Patricia Sarrafian Ward
The new world by Susan Muaddi Darraj
A frame for the sky ; Lost in freakin' yonkers by Randa Jarrar
Oh, Lebanon by Evelyn Shakir
Fire and sand by Laila Halaby
News from Phoenix ; And what else? by Joseph Geha
The salad lady by Rawi Hage
The coal bin by D.H. Melhem
Manar of Hama ; The spiced chicken queen of Mickaweaquah, Iowa by Mohja Kahf
Stage directions for an extended conversation by Yussef El Guindi
It's not about that by Samia Serageldin
Airport ; Bluebird by Pauline Kaldas
Edge of rock by May Mansoor Munn
Shakespeare in the Gaza Strip by Sahar Kayyal
Arabic lessons by David Williams

Genres: Short Stories, Literature, Anthologies, Fiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2004

About the author

Pauline Kaldas is an Egyptian-American novelist, scholar and professor.

She was born in Egypt and immigrated with her parents to the United States at the age of eight in 1969. She spent her first eight years in the Cairo suburb of Mohandessein with her parents, grandmother, and aunt. When her family immigrated, they settled in the Boston area.

She attended Clark University in Worcester, MA, where she majored in English and Business. She went on to receive her M.A. in English at the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University.

After receiving her M.A., she moved to Providence, RI, where she taught at Rhode Island College and Rhode Island School of Design. In 1990, she went to Egypt with her husband, T.J. Anderson III, and they spent three years teaching at the American University in Cairo. Those three years gave her the opportunity to re-connect with her family and immerse herself into her culture. It was a period of intense artistic and personal growth. She returned to Egypt again in 2002 with her husband and two daughters for six months when her husband was awarded a Fulbright to teach at Cairo University. Their most recent trip to Egypt was in 2010.

She is the author of The Measure of Distance, a novel (University of Arkansas Press), Looking Both Ways, a collection of essays (Cune Press, 2017), The Time Between Places, a collection of short stories (University of Arkansas Press, 2010), Letters from Cairo, a travel memoir (Syracuse University Press, 2007), and Egyptian Compass, a collection of poetry (WordTech Communications, 2006). She also co-edited with Khaled Mattawa Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Literature (University of Arkansas Press, 2009). She was awarded a fellowship in fiction from the Virginia Commission of the Arts and has been in residency at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Arts.

Pauline Kaldas is currently Professor of English and Creative Writing at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA.

Reviews

[Marisela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really good short stories in here. It did range. Some were a tad predictable. But a good read none the less.

[Mom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories are not my favorite -- just as I get involved with a character, the story is over. But this was a good introduction to some Arab American writers of diverse backgrounds. And the characters are diverse as well -- Christian and Muslim, recent immigrants and American-born, assimilated and not.

My favorite stories were "News from Phoenix" in which an Arab and a Jewish couple slowly overcome their suspicion and become friends, "Spiced Chicken Queen" about an abused woman who is fearful of her husband and yet unable to get much help from the American legal system until she very cleverly solves her own dilemma, and "Edge of Rock" which shows the difficulty of adapting to a new culture, a new language, an unfamiliar place, all while facing fear for a struggling child.

If you are a fan of short stories, and especially if you are interested in the Arab view, this is an interesting collection.

[Ming · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rich sampling of short stories by a diverse and talented group of American writers. Several author's works, such as Randa Jarrar's (a favorite author of mine), were bold on its own terms, outside of this collection. Other stories reflected themes which are familiar from having read about other American immigrant experiences, such as those of Asian Americans and Latinos. I was heartened by those similarities.

Ultimately, I most appreciated and enjoyed the range of topics, styles and creativity in this volume. And I hope there will be additional ones to come.

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many works on Arab American Literature begin with Shahrazad, the story-teller from The Thousand and One Nights . This anthology begins with Shahrazad's sister Dinarzad. She is the one who requests the story. As the editors point out, "Central as she was to the structure of the tales, she disappears into silence." The editors find Dinarzad a more appropriate figure for contemporary Arab American experience. Dinarzad becomes a figure to discuss silence and absence and the hidden vanished narratives. Through Dinarzad the editors use the trope of "coming out." This is Dinarzad's coming out. This is the coming out not only of Arab American literature but specifically the contemporary short story as Arab American prose more than poetry has lacked visibility.

I have moved through a number of anthologies of Arab American literature in the past few months. Dinarzad's Children may be my favorite. This is largely because it is full of short stories (my favorite genre of the moment) and because the short stories speak more directly to the ambiguities of the present than I found the prose pieces in many earlier anthologies to do.