On Arab American Literature

This issue of MELUS contains eight papers, three interviews, an introduction and sixteen book reviews. Three of the papers discuss the two novels by Diana Abu-Jaber: Arabian Jazz (1993) and Crescent (2003). One paper discusses Edward Said's autobiography Out of Place (1999). The remaining papers deal with different aspects of Arab American literature in the United States. Samaa Abdurraqib's paper (pp. 55–70) on the hijab and other issues in immigrant Muslim literature sits uncomfortably within this volume of essays (one of the novels it discusses is a memoir by the Afghan writer Maryam Qudrat Aseel). The subjects of the three interviews are Suheir Hammad, Khaled Mattawa and Diana Abu-Jaber. The interviews differ in flavour. The one with Suheir Hammad preserves the flow of oral speech, which makes it extremely interesting but hard to follow. The interview with Khaled Mattawa was conducted electronically. Diana Abu-Jaber's interview is a textualised record of a face-to-face interview. These interviews add a personal voice to the volume under review.