An exhibit at The Museum of American Poetics, online at the Poets Path website.
These exhibits reflect the humanitarian free speech contributions made by Middle Eastern American poets daring to print what others within and outside their region may censor.
From the book The Poetry of Arab Women here are 4 women who have played an instrumental part in ethnic American Poetry.
Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian poet. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies and literary journals, including the Atlantic Review. She recently worked as a managing editor for a quarterly magazine in Northern California and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Elmaz Abi-Nader is an Arab American author, poet and performance artist whose work has been printed and performed throughout the States and Middle East. Her most recent volume, In The Country of My Dreams…won the Josephine Miles PEN Oakland award for multi-cultural poetry. Her first play, Country of Origin won two Drammies from Oregon’s Drama Circle and she is touring with her second performance, Ramadan Moon, Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon, her first book, is a widely acclaimed memoir of one family’s immigration. Abinader has served as a senior Fulbright Scholar to Egypt and currently teaches at Mills College.
Nathalie Handal was born on July 29, 1969. She has lived in the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, and has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Poet, writer, and literary researcher, she is presently living between New York and London, where she is a researcher in the English and Drama Department, University of London, and a Chair at the Pushkin Club. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, literary journals and anthologies in the United States, Europe and the Arab world. Handal has read/performed poetry widely, and have given lectures on Ethnic-American literature at the Sorbonne, Yarmouk University, University of Jordan, University of London and numerous other universities and conferences worldwide. Her book of poetry, The Never Field was published by the Post-Apollo Press, California; and Traveling Rooms, a CD of her poetry and improvisational music by Russian musicians, Vladimir Miller and Alexandr Alexandrov, was produced in the United Kingdom, and released summer 1999. She is the editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology (Interlink, New York, 2000).