CONTENTS

FOREWORD, Lisa Suhair Majaj

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Voices from the Threshold: A Few Thoughts on Middle Eastern American Writing

ELMAZ ABINADER

Mothers and Daughters (nonfiction)

Preparing for Occupation (poetry)

Flying to Arabia (poetry)

DIANA ABU-JABER

Tainted Love (fiction)

SUSAN ATEFAT-PECKHAM

Marvari—The Pearl Tree (poetry)

Fariba’s Daughters (poetry)

Dates (poetry)

Them? (nonfiction)

JOSEPH AWAD

from “A Novena for My Mother” (poetry)

Memories of Tiger Rag (poetry)

For My Irish Grandfather (poetry)

Windows (poetry)

Aunt Anna (poetry)

For My Lebanese Grandfather (poetry)

Christmas at Sithee’s (poetry)

BARBARA BEDWAY

Death and Lebanon (fiction)

Why We Are in the DAR (fiction)

Turning Lebanese: A Family Story (nonfiction)

In Her Own Hand (nonfiction)

JOSEPH GEHA

Where I’m From—Originally (nonfiction)

Stepping Out (fiction)

SAMUEL HAZO

Understory (poetry)

The First Sam Hazo at the Last (poetry)

Ahead of Time (poetry)

JOE KADI

Writing as Resistance, Writing as Love (nonfiction)

Coiled Tongues (poetry)

Moving from Cultural Appropriation Toward Ethical Cultural Connections (nonfiction)

PAULINE KALDAS

Cumin and Coriander (fiction)

The Top (fiction)

Shifting Spaces: 1990–1993 (nonfiction)

JACK MARSHALL

Deal (poetry)

G–D (poetry)

Arabian Nights (poetry)

KHALED MATTAWA

Selections from the Ibn Hazm Epistolary

D. H. MELHEM

Preface for Walt Whitman (poetry)

28. [bright world in morning light . . .] (poetry)

53. Hudson Continuum (poetry)

then/now, part one (poetry)

[Bookladen on Friday . . .] (poetry)

[Charon drives his ambulance . . .] (poetry)

[mother . . .] (poetry)

EUGENE P. NASSAR

Summer 1958 (nonfiction prose poetry)

Summer 1964 (nonfiction prose poetry)

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Yellow Glove (prose poetry)

Arabic (poetry)

Jerusalem (poetry)

Holy Land (poetry)

The Only Word a Tree Knows (poetry)

Renovation (nonfiction)

Amir & Anna (poetry)

Your Weight, at Birth (poetry)

Supple Cord (poetry)

The Only Democracy in the Middle East (poetry)

Because of Poems (poetry)

NAHID RACHLIN

The Calling (fiction)

ROGER SEDARAT

My Mother’s 20 Persian Gold Bracelets (poetry)

San Antonio, 1979 (poetry)

Khomeini’s Beard (poetry)

Outing Iranians (poetry)

CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES