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I, Too, Am the Americas: Framing the Arab Diaspora between Brazil and the United States
Abstract
For more than a century, writers of Arab origin have unevenly circulated between Brazil and the U.S.. Based on historical and literary sources, my paper focuses on three moments of Arab intellectual crossings in the Americas: the early twentieth century mahjari literary collectives in Sao Paulo and New York City; the mid-century American University of Beirut alumni network between the Universidade de Sao Paulo and Princeton University's Philip Hitti; and the late twentieth century rise of two novelists, Milton Hatoum in Brazil and Diana Abu-Jaber in the U.S.. I suggest that a North-South hierarchy took shape in the Arab diaspora during the two earlier periods but was disrupted in recent times. Through the mid-twentieth century, only U.S. Arab intellectual production was translated into Portuguese and released in Brazil. Yet, starting in the 1990s, this flow was reversed as Hatoum's Brazilian novels with Arab tropes were translated from Portuguese to English and published in the U.S.. In confirming and disrupting North-South asymmetries, Brazilian and U.S. writers with Arab ancestry show that they, too, are the Americas.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Other
Sub Area
None