Thread by @SusanDarraj

A thread on being an Arab American writer: or... why Representation Matters... or How I could become a millionaire overnight.

#arabtwitter #representationmatters

1/

The fact is there just aren't many opportunities to be published if you have an Arab name. Like other poc, we watch as white writers get huge contracts and advances to write books using our people/tragedies/stories as material.

White writers are seen as somehow "objective." 2/

However, there is one angle we have that the "objective white writer" does not... We have something the publishing industry wants: we can be the inside informer. We can authenticate the "single story" that is so entrenched.

3/

The single story (Adichie's phrase) about Arabs is that our culture is allegedly patriarchal and misogynistic. (Show me a culture that isn't patriarchal and misogynistic).

The publishing industry is mostly white. Well-intentioned, but they've bought the single story... 4/

So they seek it out, they lift it up, and then they think that's how they "give us a voice."

I mean, editors want books by Arab women that "resonate" and are "authentic." Translation: they want us to "tell our story," as long as the story feels familiar to them. 5/

I think about Solomon Northrup, whose life story was told in Twelve Years a Slave by a white ghostwriter. As far as I know, Northrup was a literate man. And Twelve Years a Slave contains scenes that are fictionalized and that read like passages from Gone with the Wind. 6/

Why wasn't Northrup given a chance to write his own story? It's why, as I tell my students, that Frederick Douglass' autobiography is subtitled "Written by Himself," because there was a tradition of Black stories being usurped by white writers (who had good intentions.) 7/

Not trying to compare the usurpation of Black stories to that of Arab stories. Arabs in the United States have only survived because of the civil rights fought for and won by Black and indigenous people... Just saying there is a legacy in the publishing industry ... 8/

... of silencing people of color, while rewarding some poc who tell the familiar story, who serve as the inside informants.

Exhibit A: Norma Khouri, who perpetrated a hoax on the book industry with her "memoir" Honor Lost, about the honor killing of her best friend in Jordan. 9/

It was all a lie, as Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini uncovered, but boy, did Khouri make a lot of money. And the fact that the publisher bought that book without doing basic fact-checking still stuns me. How easily they were tricked... 10/

because they loved the idea of an Arab woman outing her own people.

This places a burden on Arab women writers, and on all poc trying to publish a book... we know what the white industry thinks of us. We know the single story it wants to hear and amplify. 11/

There are elements of truth to that story. But we want to reveal the complexities, the nuances, the realities...

We need the industry to work on itself, to hire more poc, to open opportunities for writers as well as editors.

I'm not here to censor anyone... 12/

... or say that a white writer cannot write about our community. But whether they should/shouldn't be "allowed" to is NOT the question.

The question is why are THOSE books, or the books by Arabs that confirm the stereotypes, the only books on the shelf? 13/

Some names of Arab American writers you should be reading... people who write stories/poems that all readers need to hear... Please add to it 14/14

Sahar Mustafah
Randa Jarrar
Hayan Charara
Phil Metres
Marwa Helal
Hala Alyan
Etaf Rum
Eman Quotah
Marguerite Dabaie
susan abulhawa

Check out Rajia Hassib, Zeyn Joukhadar, Aya Khalil, Jasmine Warga, Malika Ghraib, Zaina Arafat, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, Layla AlAmmar, Randa Abdel-Fattah ...

@rajiahassib @ayawrites @ZeynJoukhadar @MalakaGharib @Layla_AlAmmar @jasminewarga @RandaAFattah