Arabic Literature
First, the classic. There are many writings by Kahlil Gibran, but my two favorites are The Prophet, and also Broken Wings. I also like The Garden of the Prophet. If it's modern Arab-American poetry you're looking for, I have a few to recommend. Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab-American Poetry edited by Gregory Orfalea and Sharif Elmusa (Interlink Books press, 1988) is a great place to start sampling this area. 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 the Arab world, Ameen Rihani and Khalil Gibran, the collection includes a range of work from many other Arab-American poets and contains well over one hundred poems from twenty different poets. The biographies of the poets are interesting and the personal statements from each poet are a nice compliment to a very good collection of poems. Grape Leaves is an excellent place to begin for anyone seeking to hear the Arab-American poetic voice.
Another great book of Arab-American poetry is Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing, edited by Khaled Mattawa and Munir Akash (Syracuse University Press, 1999.) Its a interesting collection of short stories and poetry from over forty writers and poets. The collection includes work by Naomi Shihab Nye, Etel Adnan, Mohja Kahf, Halim Barakat, and many many more talented writers. Famed poet Mahmoud Darwish had this to say about the anthology: ...this ambitious endeavour provides all exiles, wherever they may be, with a common thread that enables them to find creative grassroots in their country of exile. However, you don't have to be Arab or Arab-American to appreciate the variety of works in this book.
Another interesting collection of poetry is Naomi Shihab Nye's anthology The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East (Simon and Schuster, 1998.) This collection is one of my favorites, not only for the content, but for the wonderful artwork tucked between the poetic words, and the seperation of the poetry into creatively labeled sections such as: Pick A Sky and Name it, The World is a Glass You Drink From, and There Was in Our House A River which are all words extracted from the various poems throughout the book. This book is wonderfully presented and contains works from Mahmoud Darwish, and Hanan Ashrawi, and a myriad of other talented writers like Nathalie Handal, Lisa Suhair Majjaj, and Sharif Elmusa, to name a few.
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