When Bethlehem native and international
scholar Nathalie Handal set out to collect a volume of poetry by Arab women, she didn't
know her book would be published in a year when the world's attention would be focused
on the Middle East.
Published last autumn, Handal ‘s
book,
"The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology" (Interlink, $22) draws on
many voices, from the oppressed to the privileged, to prove that the experience of Arab
women istoo varied to be stereotyped.
Handal will read from the
book today at 4 p.m. in the Bentley Library Browsing Room at Simmons College. The event is free and open
to the public.
Handal said the poetry she has compiled
shares some universal qualities with poetry by women who do not have Arab heritage.
"Certainly, these poets deal with universal women’s issues and experience such
as motherhood, sexuality, love, old age,” she said.
“But the poetry of Arab women mirrors not only personal experience but the
world around them, giving the work a political dimension, too.”
Handal said just as American poets
were driven to write about the events of Sept. 11, Arab women who live in war zones
"cannot detach themselves from this experience," which shows up in their poetry.
And political themes inform the poetry of women who have never lived in the Middle East,
including Americans, Canadians and even a Swede of Arab ancestry, who feel
themselves to be marginalized in the lands where they live.
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Almaz
Abinader is a case in point. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, Abinader grew up in the
small coal-mining town of Carmichaels, Pa., where she "was raised as a Lebanese
daughter with all the sense of identity and cultural restrictions that come with
that." Her poem, "Letters From Home," in Handal's anthology describes her
sensitivity to her father's longings for his homeland, which were stirred when he received
letters from relatives there. In another poem, "What We Leave Behind," she
reveals the tension that she felt during the Iran hostage crisis, when she and her family
"faced some hostility" here in the United States. While much of the poetry in Handal's
anthology wrestles with difficult situations, she hastened to point out that some women
with Arab heritage live in lands where they are fully assimilated "In South America,
Arab women don't have this notion of hyphenation (as in Arab-American)" she noted.
But although these women don't face the same day-to-day struggles as some do in other
parts of the world, "still there are links, parallels," Handal said."
Most of all, Handal's collection makes
it clear that the word “Arab" is too general. "One of the admirable things
about the anthology," Abinader said, "is that it doesn't allow that severance
between American women who drive their own cars and Middle Eastern women who wear the
burqa. It brings us all together." |