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Arab American Literature
Emerging voices in the Arab American community

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Power of Prose

Arab American &
South Asian Voices

American literature is unique in the number of voices and cultures it conveys, giving it the power to transform opinions and challenge stereotypes in both obvious and subtle ways.  Christa Smith Anderson explains that Arab Americans and South Asians are speaking up in new American writing, reflecting changing waves of immigrants.

American literature, and the voices and languages it encompasses, expands as the United States becomes home to an ever-greater number of ethnic minorities. Hamod (Sam)[1]  and Lisa Suhair Majaj are (among others) bringing Arab-American voices to literature. Dying with the Wrong Name, a poem by Hamod (Sam), is dedicated to “all the immigrants who lost their names at Ellis Island.” The poem reclaims their original names:

Na'aim Jazeeny, Sine Hussein, Im’a Brahim, Hussein Hamode Subh’, all lost when “A man in a

dark blue suit at Ellis Island says, with

tiredness and authority, ‘You only need two

names in America’ and suddenly - as cleanly

as the air, you've lost

your name.”[2]

Latha Viswanathan is among a growing number of writers incorporating language from India into American literature. Viswanathan’s short story Cool Wedding appears in the 2003 edition of the anthology, New Stories from the South.

“Dear Lakshmi,” the story begins. “In the summer, this place is like India: Bombay, Madras, only fancy name Houston-Pouston, America,” Shoba writes in her letter. She goes on to tell Lakshmi of “putting kumkum tikka on forehead,”[3] an impressive festival lunch in a house with “real kolam design at the entrance,”[4] making “condensed milk payasam for desert,”[5] and telling Lakshmi's brother-in-law, “‘Arre baba, do some sit-ups, some exercise...’”[6]

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni offers historical perspective on Indian immigrants in America with her poem, “The Brides Come to Yuba City,” which includes the following description:

Behind us,

the black wedding trunks, sharp-edged

shiny, stenciled with strange men-names

our bodies do not fit into: Mrs. Baldev Johl, Mrs. Kanwal Bains[7]

A footnote explains the history behind the scene presented in the poem, which places, early in the 20^th century, a young woman in Yuba City, an area “settled largely by Indian railroad workers” who were confined by immigration restrictions that prevented them from bringing families to the United States or from returning to India to marry.