Anwer Sabbar Zamil Al-Yasir Exploring Identity in the American
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Anwer Sabbar Zamil Al-Yasir Exploring Identity in the American Multicultural Society: The Arab American Autobiography Doctoral Thesis ~ Summary ~ On September 26, 1986, the American Space Shuttle Challenger crashed. General consternation around the world, images circulating that will mark generations, like that of a group of children who cry tears for their beloved mistress: Christa McAuliff. This smiling young woman represents the typical American, or rather the ideal American, the kind-hearted teacher, the caring mother, and her tragic death shakes the whole world. Challenger’s experience was just as symbolic as it was scientific. Among the crew members, a mosaic of ethnically different people, like multicultural America: an African American, an Asian American, a Hispanic American, a Jewish American and an Arab American: Christa McAuliff. This story seems to us symbolic on several levels, which is why we chose it to introduce our subject. America, first of all, likes to highlight its diversity: cultural diversity, “racial” diversity. Multiculturalism is the key word. And the Challenger shuttle was supposed to represent a colorful and hyphenated America, that is to say populated by individuals who are something American: whether they are African, Asian or Arab, or even Native. The second thing is that Christa was an Arab American, that is, an American citizen of a hyphenated identity. A detail very little known to the general public is that her maternal grandfather was of Lebanese Maronite descent, and she was great niece of Lebanese- American historian Philip Hurri Hitti. Christa was selected from more than 11,500 candidates to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project, and found her untimely end in her first (and last) extraterrestrial experience. So many paradoxes already: Christa was the typical American, but she was also an Arab American ... So are the typical Arab Americans to be hyphenated? The Arabs are supposed to be easily recognizable, thanks to a specific 1 phenotype and behavior particularly incompatible with Western values, but Christa was a charming teacher who was chosen by a NASA jury, following her remarkable course on “the American woman”. Her “Arabness” can only surprise her: neither her name nor her first name was Arabic, she bore no sign of belonging to the Muslim religion, and she was a perfect American teacher! This brings us to a paradox: even if apparently invisible, and impossible to identify for most Americans, the Arabs have been a real presence in the cultural landscape of the US for almost two centuries of American history. Among the landmarks of the early Arab (and Muslim) presence, we should mention since the 1831 publication of The Life of Omar Ibn Said (an autobiographical work, originally written in Arabic by Omar Ibn Said, a West African educated slave) the Commemorative Plaque commissioned by Sultan Abdülmecid I for the Washington Monument, in Washington D.C. (1853), the representation of Islam in the “Evolution of Civilization” mural of the Library of Congress (Washington D.C.). Let us not forget Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an, published in 1764. Since Omar Ibn Said’s autobiographical memoir, many other Arab Americans decided to write down their experience of displacement and relocation, of adaptation and assimilation in a new and not always friendly environment, among them Assaad Y. Kayat, Abraham Mitrie Rihbany, F. M. Al Akl, George Haddad, Edward Atiyah, Salom Rizk, Isaac Diqs, Mikhail Naimy, Fawaz Turki, Edward Said, Ihab Hassan, Laila Abou-Saif, and Fatima Mernissi. On the other hand, most of the novels written by the Arab American writers contain autobiographical elements, as is the case with Arabian Jazz (Diana Abu-Jaber, 1993), West of the Jordan (Laila Halaby, 2003), The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (Mohja Kahf, 2006), or Sweet Dates in Basra (Jessica Jiji, 2010). ***** 2 In its essence, autobiography is the story an author makes of his own existence, recalling the facts he considered most significant for the development of his personality. The author becomes aware of himself through memories and is the protagonist of the narrated events. An autobiographical text contains many personal reflections and the language used is usually quite sustained. The story of one’s life (or, better, of some of its traits to which particular meaning is attributed, the so-called biographems) can be in verse, in the form of an essay, a theatrical work, a cinematographic film or a comic strip; generally, however, it is a prose story. The autobiography, as a codified literary genre, acquires importance and knows an exceptional diffusion especially during the XVIII century, but it is in the Latin and Christian literary tradition that the autobiography has its roots: they are in fact the Confessions of Saint Augustine, the first great model of autobiographical narrative, made so by the inner research and the new psychological elements brought by Christianity. Autobiographical writing represents an important means for the enhancement of oneself, for the development of cognitive abilities and different forms of thought, for the creation of a sensitivity aimed at listening and assimilating the testimonies of others. Autobiography is a rather interesting genre also to better understand certain historical or political contexts. It can be motivating to know the personality life that we find important for us or in which we mirror ourselves. But why, at a certain point in one’s life, does one decide to write about oneself? Contrary to what one might think, one does not necessarily do it to talk about oneself, to give vent to one’s narcissism or expression to one’s creative excess. Sometimes autobiographical writing is instead intended to outline, albeit for hints and indirectly, the historical and social context in which it was formed and which, in turn, has contributed to change. Unlike other literary genres, such as the tragedy, the novel, the epic and even the lyric poetry, which is probably a younger sister (less in volume, certainly not for fame), the autobiography has always aroused mistrust and fear, and indeed the custodians of literary and civil morality 3 have often tried to prevent her from entering the republic of letters. What defines it is the nature of its referent in the world, the life of a person, but if this were really its specific difference it would not be possible to distinguish it from biography, which instead, at least for moderns, belongs to the historical disciplines, and requires meticulous research in private and public archives. But on the other hand, one of its most frequent distinctive features (even if it knows exceptions) is the use of the personal pronoun “I”, which brings it closer to the lyrical genre which, of all genres, is the least mimetic, the most expressive, and which perhaps, precisely because this (or rather, because this is how it was perceived by the romantics), contributed to making the definition of literature as a mimesis, as a representation of a shared and objective reality. Autobiography is subject in other words to two opposing contradictory norms: (1) that of strictly and exclusively sticking to the truth, like the most empirical of human sciences, that is, history; (2) that of being subjective and expressive as the most subjective of literary genres, the lyrical genre, so subjective that only the modern age, from the eighteenth century onwards, has fully recognized its existence. As a result, autobiography is the only literary genre that has to combine a high degree of objectivity (like those novels that profess “realism”) and even more of historical truth (such as the historical novel, and even more the biography) with the maximum of subjectivity, and therefore, to the limit, of literariness. Philippe Lejeune gave this paradox a legal and logical form when he defined autobiography as a genre in which author, narrator and protagonist coincide, and when he added that in autobiography the author is linked to the reader by an “autobiographical pact” which commits him not only to truthfully tell the truth, but also to try to communicate the meaning of his own existence, to express his own personal, individual, intimate truth. 4 The modern Arab autobiography revises its cultural baggage with the suggestion of the novel and with a renewed sense of becoming and history. The society changes and inevitably the function of the adab, which expresses new demands and addresses itself to a broad public: not only to the elite, but to those who, with the strength of will, and the study, can improve their own conditions and those of the nation. The concept of identity, of self-awareness, reflects the vision of society that sees the emergence of a new class, the effendiyya, which, thanks to the education received, succeed and enter the reformed mechanisms of politics alongside the a'yān. And although the definition of “bourgeoisie” is not perfectly fitting, a sort of middle class actually takes shape, which partly recalls the one referred to by Gusdorf (1956), when attributing the birth of the autobiographical genre to the emergence of the modern concept of the individual. The Arab American writers, by accepting exile, accomplished a dramatic cultural shift. Most of them belong to one Christian denomination or another, having acquired from a very early age a religious education different from that of the great majority of the population in their countries of origin: another language, another frame of thought, different traditions, and even other devotional texts, originating in a different cultural space. All these prepared them for the self-imposed exile. It is as if they had already left Greater Syria, or Egypt, or the Maghreb long before their physical displacement; the only element that can fill in the geographical and spiritual gap is the adopted language—English—with its cultural, ideological, and spiritual load.