Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance: Orientalism, Race and the Idea of the Arabian Nights: 19 (International Library of Cultural Studies, 19) - Hardcover

'This is one of the first analyses of Arab-American women's cultural production that brings together literary writings and performance. Somaya Sabry discusses four women's celebration and contestation of the post-Gulf War emergence of the hyphenated Arab-American as a new ethnic identity and culture. Each uses the Sheherezadian narrative of survival through storytelling to resist Americans' racialized perceptions of Arabs. The women's transformation of the oral narrator of the Arabian Nights from victim to literate survivor challenges neo-Orientalist projections of Arab women's silence and passivity. Their many different stories of daily life in the American diaspora bump up against, dialogue with and ultimately undo stereotypes.' - Miriam Cooke, Professor of Arabic and Arab Cultures, Duke University, and author of Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature (2000) and Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official (2007); 'Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance charts an Arabic tradition that has migrated through fiction, poetry, performance art and stand-up comedy. Grounded in the ways that the actual translations of The Thousand and One Nights silenced or otherwise undermined its female protagonist, this book engages a rich tradition of cultural translation in which 'Sheherazadian narrative' is reinvented and performed in the Arab-American context. Somaya Sabry's ability to write from both sides of the hyphen - her knowledge of both Arab and American cultural traditions - makes her a valuable guide to their intersections and her manuscript a significant intervention into American literary studies.' - Ira Dworkin, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, The American University in Cairo; 'This book is timely and addresses a sorely noted absence in Arab American literary studies. Somaya Sabry shows how Arab American women writers and performers have re-appropriated the Scheherazade narrative to figure the dynamics of race and affiliation within their diasporic context. The book successfully delineates the writers' and performers' attempts to redefine the figure of the Nights' heroine and use it as trope for resisting and subverting Orientalist stereotyping and monolithic discourses, thus foregrounding Scheherazade's storytelling as a liberating active agency. It offers an astute and insightful analysis of the field thus contributing to a nascent, though important and thriving area of Arab-American studies. Particularly noteworthy is the freshness and originality with which Arab-American women writers and their works are viewed. To have Scheherazade speak from a new transnational and 'translational' position is itself innovative; to lodge her in Arab-American diaspora in the midst of current global, political and power dynamics as a result of the September 11 events, the 'war on terror' and the American occupation of Iraq as well as the fast-growing Islam-phobia is also most engaging.' - Layla Al Maleh, Associate Professor, Department of English, Kuwait University; editor of Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature 2009

The public image of Arabs in America has been radically affected by the 'war on terror'. But stereotypes of Arabs, manifested for instance in Orientalist representations of Sheherazade and the Arabian Nights in Hollywood, have prevailed for much longer. Here Somaya Sabry argues that the Arab-American experience has been powerfully shaped by racial discourse and Orientalism, and is further complicated today by hostility towards Arabs in post-9/11 America. She shows how Arab-American women writers and performers confront and subvert racial stereotypes in this charged context by recasting representations of Sheherazade. Shedding new light on Arab-American women's negotiations of identity, this book will be indispensable for all those interested in the Arab-American world, American ethnic studies and race, as well as diaspora studies, women's studies, literature, cultural studies and performance studies.