Teaching Arabs, Writing Self

Description

Evelyn Shakir's witty, wise, and beautifully written memoir explores her status as an Arab American woman, from the subtle bigotry she faced in Massachusetts as a second-generation Lebanese whose parents were not only foreign but eccentric, to the equally poignant blend of dislocation and homecoming she felt in Bahrain, Syria, and Lebanon, where she taught American literature to university students.In America, growing up in the 1950s and '60s, her world encompassed Boston's Revere Beach (her uncle ran the famous Cyclone roller-coaster) and the world of academia (she has degrees from Wellesley, Harvard, and Boston University and was awarded a pair of Fulbrights). She effortlessly combines personal anecdote with cultural, political, and historical background, and is incapable of stereotyped thinking: one of the book's many pleasures is the diversity she finds among the people she encounters in the Middle East, including not only students, but cab drivers, storekeepers, and...