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"Grape Leaves": A Book Review

© Aida Hasan

Arab-American poetry is a newcomer, relatively speaking, to the American poetry scene. That is not to say there were not a number of Arab-Americans penning poetic words over the past century -- Khalil Gibran being the first to come to mind. However, as a whole, Arab-American poetry has gone unnoticed. Fortunately, Orfalea and Elmusa's 2000 edition of Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab-American Poetry helps to fill this void.

The collection of poetry, which includes works from the 1920's to the 1980's, is organized chronologically by birth of the poets. Beginning with two of the most well known outside of the Arab world, Ameen Rihani and Khalil Gibran, the collection includes a range of work from other Arab-American poets who are lesser known in comparison but talented and prolific nonetheless. Grape Leaves contains well over one hundred poems from twenty different poets, including works by the editors, Orfalea and Elmusa, themselves. There are brief biographies for each poet as well as their personal statement of purpose -- their explanation of why they write, conceptions of themselves as Arab-Americans, and/or the current state of American poetry.

While Arab-Americans come from a broad range of countries, backgrounds and experiences, their poetry in general is, as the editors point out, "other"-oriented. Their words tend to focus more on the family than on themselves. A good number of the poems reflect this strong tie to the family. In D.H. Melhem's "Grandfather: Frailty Is Not the Story", she writes in wonderful remembrance of her grandfather, and in "Rest In Love," she writes "My mother, my grandmother, sit at the white enamel kitchen table, kneading dough, shelling peas, measuring pine nuts into the chopped lamb and onions....rolling stuffed grape leaves and stuffed cabbage like cigars.....my mother, my grandmother, at the kitchen table with me between them on a stool in the corner where I watch and listen, tasting dough and stuffing, rewards for being content to observe and accept, with my silence, their love."

Other themes that emerge in this collection of poetry are poems about longing for the ancestral country, the "old country", and thoughts and experiences about life in America. For those poets who are not immigrants, or who have been living in America for most of their lives, their poems are often of the cultural signs which link them to their Arab heritage -- Arabic food, memories of Arabic spoken. Elmaz Abinader writes of her father, in "Letter From Home", Everytime you weep, I feel the surface of a river somewhere on Earth is breaking. You wipe your eyes as you read aloud, a letter from the old country.....I don't understand the language but feel a single breath of grief holding this room."