Abd al-Massih Haddad (1890-1963) made a name for himself within the Arab diaspora in the United States as the founder and editor of al-Sa'ih, the longest running periodical published in Arabic in America. Meanwhile, he is lesser known for a series of short stories he printed in this periodical and subsequently published as a collection in 1921, named Hikayat al-Mahjar. The collection features thirty-one stories that portray episodes in the lives of a wide cast of Syrian characters who were navigating the challenges of adapting to life in the American Mahjar. While the literature of the American Mahjar is best known for the innovative free verse poetry the likes of which Kahlil Gibran composed, Haddad's more obscure collection offers experimentation within Arabic prose, in both content and form. In fact, Kahlil Gibran himself was so astonished by the realist content of the first story Abd al-Massih Haddad published that he immediately wrote him, encouraging him to continue to develop these illuminating literary portraits of their Syrian community in the American diaspora. Hikayat al-Mahjar was the first collection of short stories, to my knowledge, that depicted the early Arab émigré community in Arabic literature at a time when this community was assimilating into post-World War I America. It must be noted that the collection's focus on the Arab community was in stark contrast to the more popular Mahjar poetry, which tended toward nostalgic depictions and invocations of the homeland. In my paper I will analyze a selection of stories from Haddad's collection and reflect on how this fiction constructs this early Arab émigré community in America. The collection is inclusive, in that the thirty-one stories allow for a plethora of Arab voices, while it is also insular, in that very few American characters are depicted despite the geographical setting of the stories. While the collection may not feature many American characters, it grapples intensely with the challenging process of adapting to, and resisting, America's social, cultural, and ideological landscape. Debates over gender roles, race and ethnicity, and America's individualist ethos permeate this innovative collection and inform the representations of the Arab émigré community in America. I will argue that Haddad's collection of short stories elucidates the contours of this community by centering Arab characters' engagement with, and ambivalence towards, the behaviors, ideas, norms, and symbols they encounter in America.