Arab American Women’s Poetry: Violence and Boundaries in the Levantine Diaspora by Christina LaRose A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English and Women’s Studies) in The University of Michigan 2018 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Evelyn A. Alsultany, Co-Chair Associate Professor Ruby C. Tapia, Co-Chair Assistant Professor Charlotte M. Karem Albrecht Professor Sidonie A. Smith Christina LaRose [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6209-0329 © Christina LaRose 2018 DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my father, Daniel Clayton LaRose, and my teta, Najla Simon. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the University of Michigan for providing me with the financial support necessary to complete my doctoral studies. Specifically, I owe a debt of gratitude to the following sources: the Rackham Merit Fellowship, the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, the Community of Scholars Program, the Department of English Language and Literature, and the Department of Women’s Studies. I also wish to thank the Mellon Foundation for providing me with two public humanities grants. Many thanks to my wonderful dissertation committee who encouraged me and helped me to greatly improve my work: co-chairs Ruby Tapia and Evelyn Alsultany, and members Sidonie Smith and Charlotte Karem Albrecht. Thanks to Maria Cotera who generously gave of her time for a directed readings course in the Fall of 2013, and who served on my preliminary exam committee. Thanks also to current and former University of Michigan faculty and staff who supported, influenced, and encouraged me and my work: Lilia Cortina, Nadine Naber, Linda Gregerson, Leela Fernandes, Peggy McCracken, Walter Cohen, Amy Germain, Jan Burgess, Natalie Bartolacci, Emma Flores-Scott, and Dwight Lang. Thank you to Laura Schram for her assistance with my public humanities fellowships. I am grateful for experiences working at Rackham Development with Jill McDonough and Sheila Waterhouse, and at Michigan Publishing with Jason Colman and Meredith Kahn. Thanks to all my University of Michigan colleagues and friends for your iii companionship and support throughout this process. I am indebted to the Arab American literary and scholarly community, especially the Radius of Arab American Writers, Mizna: Prose, Poetry & Art Exploring Arab America, and the Arab American Studies Association. Many thanks to Hedy Habra, Lana Barkawi, Louise Cainkar, Leila Ben-Nasr, Marwa Helal, Jehan Mullin, and Eman Elshaikh. Thank you to the staff of the Arab American National Museum for their research support and encouragement. I would specifically like to thank Devon Akmon, Jumana Salamey, Matthew Jaber Stiffler, Kim Silarski, Lindsay Robillard, Dave Serio, Petra Alsoofy, Isra M. El-beshir, and Kirsten Terry-Miller. Thanks to my Purdue University Northwest colleagues, especially Rachel Holtz, James Darney, and Christine Fiorite, for their friendship and support. I am grateful to my professors who helped me to earn my M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Ohio State University: Lee Martin, Erin McGraw, Lee K. Abbott, and Michelle Herman, and to my many wonderful friends and colleagues there. I had a great undergraduate education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I will always fondly remember Sid Bolkosky, beloved professor and former director of the Honors Program in which I was inspired and challenged. Thank you to Suzanne Bergeron for believing in me, for your good humor, and for your consistent support. Thank you to Maureen Linker, Lora Lempert, and Melita Schaum for their help and guidance. Thank you to Mrs. Susan Goodson, my sixth grade English teacher, and to my high school English teacher, Mr. Don Dziuk, both of whom encouraged my love of literature. Thanks to Carrie Landrum, Cheryl Phillips, Owen Cook, Alex Gonopolskiy, Paul Neamonitakis, Christy Patterson-Hamilton, the Covert family, and Kate Gomane for their enduring friendships and support over many years. Thanks to Latoya and Larry Gibbs for their friendship and encouragement. Thank you to my grandmother, Thelma, to my mother, Barbara, iv to my many wonderful aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings—Justin, Amy, Jonathan, and Ryan. I am grateful for my niece, Charlotte Rose, for all the laughter she brings me. And I can’t thank my dear husband enough for his extraordinary companionship, generosity, support, and love. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF APPENDICES viii ABSTRACT ix CHAPTER I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..……..1 II. Arab Diasporas and Poetic Negotiations of Spatiotemporal Boundaries……………..…22 III. Rethinking Boundaries of the Human Subject: Relational Identity in a Post- Anthropocentric Era ……………………………………...…………………………………….68 IV. Childhood Epistemologies: Ethical Response to Violence in the Interstices of Arab-U.S. Boundaries……………………………………………………………………………..………113 V. Deterritorialized and Archival Poetic Imaginaries: Neoliberal Critique, Caring Labor, and the Boundaries of Gender Roles…………………………………………………………143 VI. Conclusion……………………………………..…………………………………………..185 vi APPENDICES 195 BIBLIOGRAPHY 207 vii LIST OF APPENDICES APPENDIX A. Topics of Arab American Women’s Poetry 196 B. Arab American Women Poets and Relational Identity 201 C. Themes in Arab American Women’s Poetry about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 203 viii ABSTRACT This dissertation fills a research gap: to date there has not been a published scholarly monograph exclusively about Arab American women’s poetry. The study focuses on an insufficiently explored textual corpus: women poets with heritage in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories) because this is the region from which most Arab Americans trace their ancestry. Analyzing the work of twelve Arab American women who published at least one full-length poetry collection, composed in or translated into English, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the dissertation takes as its source material poems from Etel Adnan, Naomi Shihab Nye, Nathalie Handal, Suheir Hammad, Mohja Kahf, Elmaz Abinader, Hedy Habra, Marian Haddad, Laila Halaby, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Deema Shehabi, and Hala Alyan. By using poems as case studies, the dissertation explores how Arab American women poets represent the problem of violence and articulate peace-building strategies in the Levantine region and transnationally. This research discusses how Arab American women poets address the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, the subsequent French and British colonial interventions, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Lebanese Civil War, the Gulf War, and the 2003 U.S.-led war in Iraq following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. These poets, writing in the diasporic afterlives of violent origins, often reflect on boundaries. A simple definition of a boundary is a line that marks the limit of something; limits can be physical, political, historical, temporal, embodied, behavioral, psychological, emotional, or spiritual. ix These poets evince a contemplative relationship to boundaries by illuminating how boundaries are reimagined by those who survived the traumas of violence and displacement. A contemplative relationship to boundaries does not create lawlessness or chaos but promotes considerations about how to improve the conditions of life. Although these poets or their ancestors experienced or witnessed acts of violence, these poets do not view themselves as victims, but as agents who contribute insights that benefit Arab Americans and a wider collective. These poets conceptualize the writing of poetry as a process that, through engagement with readers, results in healing from violence. Each chapter inquires how these poets claim agency because of diasporic displacement, and how they respond to violent conflicts in ways that renegotiate and reimagine boundaries. Chapter 1 observes that Abinader, Kahf, and Handal ponder the nature of boundaries, both spatial and temporal, and argues that these poets develop transnational Arab subject formations that both extend and modify central ideas of the 19th century Mahjar (migrant) literary tradition for late-twentieth and early twenty-first century audiences. The chapter also attends to how Handal engages with Samuel Huntington’s (1993) “clash of civilizations” thesis. Chapter 2 investigates how Shehabi, Halaby, and Adnan deliberate on the boundaries of the human subject by placing their poetry into dialogue with contemporary theorizing on identity and by highlighting their emphasis on relational identity. Chapter 3 questions how Abinader, Majaj, Nye, and Shehabi contemplate the boundaries of childhood through child characters and perspectives. In the process, the chapter examines how these poets’ work supports a critique of epistemic privilege. Chapter 4 seeks to understand how Abinader, Hammad, Alyan, Habra, Haddad, and Nye meditate on the boundaries of gender roles. Specifically, the chapter centers on x how these poets denaturalize neoliberalism and value caring labor as central to a post-neoliberal social order. xi CHAPTER I Introduction “there is no precision in traveling – it unweaves the body, invents its lines and directions” — Nathalie Handal, “The Traveler” from Poet in Andalucía (2012) The internecine war in Syria has brought international attention to the problems of Arab regional violence and the resulting displacement of populations. Although the Syrian refugee crisis began in 2011, mass migrations of people from the Middle East have been