Visual Hakawatis: Drawing Resistance in Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi and Malaka Gharib's I Was Their American Dream
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24847/v9i12022.299Keywords:
Arab American, graphic novels, twenty-first century, resistance, storytellingAbstract
In this paper, I explore how Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi (2015) and Malaka Ghraib’s I Was Their American Dream (2019) work to forge a new space for the graphic novel in Arab American self-representation in twenty-first-century media, becoming emblematic of what I call ‘visual hakawatis.’ Visual hakawatis, I argue, use individualized acts of storytelling to transform fragments of their histories and memories into hybridizations of art and written word that reflect their increasingly hybridized existences, while interconnecting their personal, cultural, and historical experiences. In these convergences, stories of resistance and refusal emerge, intervening in notions of history- and nation-making, national belonging and national memory, resisting the marginalization or erasure of multiplicities of Arab American histories and identities within and beyond a U.S. landscape. Some key questions informing my analysis include: How do Abdelrazaq’s and Gharib’s graphic novels reconceptualize historical as well as artistic conventions of storytelling in underscoring radical forms of witnessing, memory, and resistance to U.S. hegemonic discourses and understandings of Arab Americans? In what ways does the visual medium of the graphic novel help Abdelrazaq and Gharib forge memories of and bear witness to inherited pasts and cultures, as well as underscore the complexity of Arab American positionalities and multiplicities today?
References
“2020 Arab American Book Awards Include Award’s First-Ever Prize for Graphic Memoir.” ArabLitQuarterly. 31 August 2020. https://wp.me/pHopc-9QP.
Abdelrazaq, Leila. Baddawi. Charlottesville: Just World Books, 2015.
Abirached, Zeina. I Remember Beirut. Minneapolis: Graphic Universe, 2014.
Alameddine, Rabih. The Hakawati. New York: Knopf, 2008.
Alsultany, Evelyn. Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
Ata, Iasmin. Mis(h)adra. New York: Gallery 13, 2017.
Caruth, Cathy, ed. Listening to Trauma: Conversations with Leaders in the Theory & Treatment of Catastrophic Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.56021/9781421414447
Chute, Hilary. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge: Belknap, 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674495647
Chute, Hilary. Why Comics? New York: HarperCollins, 2017.
El Rassi, Toufic. Arab in America. San Francisco: Last Gasp, 2008.
Fadda-Conrey, Carol. Contemporary Arab-American Literature: Transnational Reconfigurations of Citizenship and Belonging. New York: New York University Press, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.001.0001
Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Gharib, Malaka. I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2019.
Gharib, Malaka. “Who Gets to be American?” PowellsBooks.Blog. 1 May 2019. www.powells.com/post/original-essays/who-gets-to-be-american.
Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York: Knopf, 1923.
Hamdy, Sherine and Coleman Nye. Lissa: A Story about Friendship, Medical Promise, and Revolution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.
Hammer, Juliane. Palestinians Born in Exile: Diaspora and the Search for a Homeland. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Herwees, Tasbeeh. “The Graphic Novel ‘Baddawi’ Looks Back at Life in a Palestinian Refugee Camp.” VICE. 5 December 2015. www.vice.com/en/article/9bg8g3/the-graphic-novel-baddawi-is-like-a-palestinian-persepolis-111.
Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Jamal, Amaney and Nadine Naber, eds. Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v26i4.1375
Jarmakani, Amira. An Imperialist Love Story: Desert Romances and the War on Terror. New York: New York University Press, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479815616.001.0001
Lyden, Jacki. “The Pull of the ‘Hakawati.’” All Things Considered. NPR. 18 May 2008.
Mahdi, Waleed F. Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvz93861
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
Romaine, Barbara. “Evolution of a Storyteller: The ‘Hakawâtî’ against the Threat of Cultural Annihilation.” Al-‘Arabiyya 40/41 (2007–2008).
Sa’di, Ahmad H. and Lila Abu-Lughod. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.
Salaita, Steven. “Ethnic Identity and Imperative Patriotism: Arab Americans Before and After 9/11.” In Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It Comes from and What It Means for Politics Today. London: Pluto Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18fsb1b. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18fsb1b
Sattouf, Riad. The Arab of the Future, 4 vols. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015–19.
Shaheen, Jack G. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2012.
Shomali, Mejdulene B. “Scheherazade and the Limits of Inclusive Politics in Arab American Literature.” MELUS 43, no. 1 (2018): 65–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlx089. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlx089
Zaidé, Lamia. Bye Bye Babylon. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2012.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Natalie El-Eid
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
The content of this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.