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Susan Muaddi Darraj (born May 11, 1975) is a Palestinian American writer. [1] Born in Philadelphia to Palestinian immigrant parents, she attended Rutgers University - Camden, NJ, where she earned a master's degree in English Literature. She has authored several collections of fiction, young adult and children's books, as well as academic and personal essays and articles. Muaddi Darraj is a tenured professor of English Literature at Harford Community College as well as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Baltimore, MD.[ citation needed ]
Muaddi Darraj's first work of fiction, The Inheritance of Exile, was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2008. It has been compared to Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club because of its structure: it offers several, intertwined stories narrated by Palestinian American women, as well as stories narrated by their immigrant mothers. The book is set in the working-class neighborhood of South Philadelphia, and its characters grapple with the intersectional identities.
She is best known for her short story collection, A Curious Land, which won an American Book Award [4] in 2016 and the AWP Grace Paley Prize. [5] The stories are closely linked together, a style known as a mosaic novel. A Curious Land follows the inhabitants of a fictional Palestinian West Bank village, Tel al-Hilou ("the pretty hilltop") and traces their intertwined lives from the era of the Ottoman Empire through the first Intifada. Spanning almost a century, the stories are mostly love stories, set amidst turbulent times. Booklist said, "Darraj writes traditional, tragic love stories set among Orthodox Palestinians during periods of historical unrest. A superb collection and a perfect selection for public libraries." [6] A Curious Land was also shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. [7]
In 2020, Muaddi Darraj published a children's book series, Farah Rocks, about a Palestinian American girl named Farah Hajjar. The series, which is the first in North America to feature a Palestinian American or Arab American protagonist, earned a starred book review by the School Library Journal, which said, "Farah is a well-rounded character with ambitions and struggles; readers will identify with her challenges and root for her to succeed. A first purchase for upper elementary readers." [9] The series has received much praise for its groundbreaking portrayal of a happy, healthy and well-adjusted child of Arab immigrants, which contradicts the usual "crisis plot" in which children of color are cast.[ citation needed ]
Muaddi Darraj's first novel, Behind You Is the Sea, was published in January 2024 by an imprint of HarperCollins. According to the publisher, "Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode." It received positive reviews, including two starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist, which said, "In this episodic debut novel, Darraj portrays the joys, resentments, and yearnings of three generations of a tight-knit Palestinian American community. . . . Marvelous and moving." [10]
Muaddi Darraj described the book as a mosaic novel, centered on Marcus, a Palestinian American cop, and his father, a Palestinian immigrant -- both are eternally at odds with one another. The novel became, she wrote in LitHUb, "a story about Palestinians dealing with the loss of their homeland, as well as with the urgency of living in a country that is, itself, fraught with class tensions and unable to confront its racist past." [11]
Behind You Is the Sea received other accolades, including being noted as a "Best Book of 2024" by Apple Books, the New Yorker, Ms Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more, including NPR, which said, "If you want to know the challenges that Palestinian Americans face in the U.S., you must read this book. [Behind You Is the Sea] follows several families in Baltimore as they wrestle with poverty, religion, living in between two cultures and their pursuit of the American Dream. . . . How their lives intersect will leave you at the edge of your seat." [12] It was selected by the state of Maryland as part of the Great Reads Program at the 2024 National Book Festival in Washington DC. [13]
Muaddi Darraj edited Scheherazade's Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing , which was published in 2004 by Praeger Publishers. With Waïl Hassan, she co-edited a volume for the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series on Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. She has also contributed book chapters to several anthologies and collections, including Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction and Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism.
Muaddi Darraj authored several young adult biographies, including books about the lives of groundbreaking Americans such as Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente (baseball players), as well as Mary Eliza Mahoney [14] (the first African American nurse); she has also written biographies for young readers about famous writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Amy Tan.
The topic of diversity in publishing is one of her themes. Muaddi Darraj has written frequently about the need for more diverse book offerings, which benefit all young readers, especially children of color. An op-ed she wrote for the Baltimore Sun, "Black and brown children not represented in children's books," was widely circulated and raised awareness of this issue. [15] She has also written for Middle East Eye [16] and other venues on this topic.
She has written several articles on Arab and Arab American women and feminism, including "Understanding the Other Sister: The Case of Arab Feminism" [17] and "It's Not an Oxymoron: The Search for an Arab Feminism," both of which are widely taught and frequently anthologized.
In 2019, Muaddi Darraj launched the #TweetYourThobe social media campaign to promote Palestinian culture and the congressional campaign of Rashida Tlaib. The campaign went viral and garnered much attention for Palestinian women's artwork and Palestinian culture. #TweetYourThobe was covered widely by CNN, The New York Times, [20] Forbes Magazine, Business Insider, NPR, [21] Public Radio International, [22] and other venues. Muaddi Darraj later wrote an essay about how a poem by Langston Hughes inspired her to think of the idea. [23]
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.
Susan Mary Cooper is an English author of children's books. She is best known for The Dark Is Rising, a contemporary fantasy series set in England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology such as the Arthurian legends and Welsh folk heroes. For that work, in 2012 she won the lifetime Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, recognizing her contribution to writing for teens. In the 1970s two of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Welsh background" by the Welsh Books Council. In 2024, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.
Susan Straight is an American writer. She was a National Book Award finalist for the novel Highwire Moon in 2001.
Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her licence ès lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.
Lisa Gracia Tuttle is an American-born science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published more than a dozen novels, seven short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book on feminism, Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986). She has also edited several anthologies and reviewed books for various publications. She has been living in the United Kingdom since 1981.
Guernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is an American online magazine that publishes art, photography, fiction, and poetry, along with nonfiction such as letters, investigative pieces, and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy. It also publishes interviews and profiles of artists, writers, musicians, and political figures.
Wang Ping is a Chinese American professor, poet, writer, photographer, performance and multimedia artist. Her publications have been translated into multiple languages and include poetry, short stories, novels, cultural studies, and children's stories. Her multimedia exhibitions address global themes of industrialization, the environment, interdependency, and the people.
Tarab Abdul Hadi, also transliterated Tarab 'Abd al-Hadi, (1910–1976) was a Palestinian activist and feminist. In the late 1920s, she co-founded the Palestine Arab Women's Congress (PAWC), the first women's organization in British Mandate Palestine, and was an active organizer in its sister group, the Arab Women's Association (AWA).
Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian writer and human rights activist and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books, and the founder of a non-governmental organization, Playgrounds for Palestine. She lives in Pennsylvania. Her first novel, Mornings in Jenin, was translated into 32 languages and sold more than a million copies. The sales and reach of her debut novel made Abulhawa the most widely read Palestinian author of all time. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky And Water, was sold in 19 languages before its release, and was published in English in 2015. Against the Loveless World, her third novel, was released in August 2020, also to critical acclaim.
Randa Jarrar is an American writer, translator, and no-talent clown. Her first novel, the coming-of-age story A Map of Home (2008), won her the Hopwood Award, and an Arab American Book Award. Since then she has published short stories, essays, the collection, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (2016), and the memoir, Love Is an Ex-Country (2021).
Baltimore Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1996. It publishes short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, and items of interest to those interested in creative writing. The Baltimore Review, a literary journal of poetry and fiction, was founded by Barbara Westwood Diehl as a publication of the Baltimore Writers Alliance. The journal grew to become a nationally distributed journal, and later became an independent nonprofit organization. Susan Muaddi Darraj then led the journal from 2003 to 2010, expanding contributions to include creative nonfiction and interviews. In 2011, Barbara Westwood Diehl resumed leadership of the journal and now serves as senior editor with Kathleen Hellen. The Baltimore Review became a Web-based journal in 2011, and the first Web issue was launched in February 2012. Web-published work would be collected in print issues. Work that first appeared in the Baltimore Review has been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize and been noted in Best American Short Stories and other anthologies.
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Ruta Sepetys is a Lithuanian-American writer of historical fiction. As an author, she is a New York Times and international bestseller and winner of the Carnegie Medal and The Josette Frank Award for Fiction.
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Thawb or thobe, is an Arab garment worn by inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. It is also referred to as jubbah, dishdashah, and kandura in varieties of Arabic. The thawb is long-sleeved ankle-length traditional robe; it is mainly worn by men in the Arabian Peninsula, Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, North Africa, and some countries in East and West Africa, with regional variations in name and style. Depending on local traditions, a thawb can be worn in formal or informal settings; in the Gulf states thobes are the main formal attire for men. It is also worn by Muslim men in the Indian subcontinent due to its modest appearance, and is believed to be a sunnah, and it is commonly referred to as jubbah. The term "thobe" is also used in some varieties of Arabic to refer to women's attire, such as in Palestine and Sudan.
Brynne Rebele-Henry is an American writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American writer, poet, and clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma, addiction, and cross-cultural behavior. Her writing covers aspects of identity and the effects of displacement, particularly within the Palestinian diaspora. She is also known for acting in the short films I Say Dust and Tallahassee.
Reem Kassis is a Palestinian writer and cookbook author who holds Israeli citizenship. Her work focuses on the intersection of food with culture, history and politics.
Rauta Fahim Mohammed Al-Fahrah, better known as Rawda Al-Farkh Al-Hudhud is a Jordanian writer of Palestinian origin.
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