Teaching Arabs, Writing Self traces Evelyn Shakir’s evolution from a buddingstudent of canon English literature who was desperately trying to “becomewhite” to her epiphany that stories from her own working-class immigrantneighborhood might be of equal worth. There, she found her unique niche bybecoming an author and scholar of Arab-American literature who helped gainrecognition for this literature as a genre, and who helped readers see ArabAmericans as people rather than stereotypes.Shakir divides her memoirs into three sections. In the first, she reflectson her childhood during an era that frowned upon diversity. Like many immigrantchildren, she turns up her nose at the “wrong” foods: “Bread withpockets. Hummus and tabouli. ‘Don’t put that stuff in my lunch box,’ I said”(p. 8). She even goes so far as to join a Methodist church whose quiet, orderlysimplicity seems more “American” than her family’s ritualistic but expressiveOrthodox church. Acculturated to the “Protestant disdain for Eastern churchesand, by extension, for the East itself,” only later does she develop “[a]n inklingthat there might be treasures I had turned my back on. That I might not alwayshave to be ashamed” (p. 13).In this section, we see the historical value of Shakir’s work not only as apersonal memoir, but also as an account of twentieth-century Americana. Bornin 1938, she offers a rare narrative voice of that era – that of a Lebanese-American and a woman; a handful of personal photos literally offer a rareglimpse into the society of Arab-American women. Many of her childhoodmemories center on Boston’s nearby Revere Beach, which boasted “slot machinesspitting out weight, fortune, photos of Rita Hayworth,” “Dodgems (‘nohead-on collisions’ but we did),” and “clams in a Fryolator … corn poppingfrantic in a display case … frozen custard (banana my favorite) spirallingthick-tongued into waffle cones, then dipped headfirst in jimmies” (p. 32).Her true claim to Americanhood is that her uncle ran the beach’s “glitzy” Cycloneroller coaster, which “gave me bragging rights among my friends andhelped situate me closer to the American norm that was always just beyondmy reach” (p. 29). The Cyclone was so important to the beach’s identity thatits closure in 1969 signaled the demise of the beach itself. “It’s those cars thattell the story,” she recollects. “As soon as masses of people could afford them,Revere lost its reason for being” (p. 43) ...
Teaching Arabs, writing Self