Three Syrian women who immigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century broke the mold: they were non-normative in almost every facet of their lives, in no way conforming to society’s expectations of Victorian or Syrian womanhood. They had unconventional marriages, determined their own careers, made and kept their fortunes, and controlled not only their own lives but those of their relations. They were spectacularly successful. Marie Azeez, Sophie Daoud, and Selma Gobreen earned the (perhaps grudging) respect of their fellow immigrants as well as Americans, to whom they became well known. Most Syrian women who immigrated in the nineteenth century immediately went out to work; the precariousness of the diasporic economy demanded it. Like the men, they mainly became peddlers. Traveling alone, in pairs, or with male relatives they sold small goods from the “Holy Land” like rosaries or olive-wood boxes, cheap jewelry, notions, and household items, or specialized in fancy goods like laces, embroideries, or “Turkish goods.” Factory work, which was one of the only other jobs open to them, was much less lucrative, so most chose peddling. Women peddlers sold mainly to women, yet despite this, Syrian and American men saw peddling by women as shameful: they were exposed to unsavory people, slept in the rough, and worked unsupervised. Peddling was physically and morally risky. Just earning their own living called into question their honor and therefore that of their male relatives. In addition to attracting censure, the work was arduous, could be dangerous, and did take women far from home, so they generally stopped peddling when they married and either stayed at home or set up a mom-and-pop shop with their husband, finally conforming to the gender expectations of nineteenth-century society. For numerous and obvious reasons, there are few contemporaneous sources for Syrian women of the first wave of immigration, but the three women described in this paper were noticed, written about, and managed fortunes, all of which generated documents. By interrogating these sources, this paper will describe women who were able to defy expectations—both by choice and circumstance—and who were thereby able to accomplish what others could not. They reached a level of independence thought to be reserved for men and set an example of the possibilities open to those who were willing to risk censure in pursuit of independence.

As with any archive, collecting material on early Arab Americans is, at least in part, an exercise of exclusion and silencing. While those with power (financial, religious, cultural, social and political) can give latter-day voice to their lives, the majority of subaltern groups leave little perceivable trail for historians. The challenge for any archive is how to gather material that lends voice to those marginalized and rendered ephemeral, and how to interrogate the silences of the records to achieve that goal. This presentation will focus on the efforts of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, to archive the lives of subaltern groups.

For most people, the words “Palestinian refugees” evoke images of poverty and refugee camps. The majority of the refugees from the 1948 Palestine war were farmers living and working their lands. There is however another side to the Palestinian refugee story. It is the story of the Palestinian middle and upper classes who lived in Palestine’s main cities of Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Tiberias, Safad, and Lid. They were professional well-to-do doctors, lawyers, merchants, teachers, and artists. They lived in beautiful well-furnished stone homes with lovely gardens. These Palestinian urbanites lived a good life, socializing, and conducting business with their Jewish neighbors. They traveled internationally, owned properties, factories, farmlands, and businesses in Palestine and abroad. Most of the upper and middle class Palestinians left most of their property and possession behind when they fled the fighting during the 1948 war. Their losses in lands, buildings, capital, and moveable property were estimated in the billions of British pounds in 1948. Some of these urban Palestinians sought refuge in the United States immediately after the 1948 Palestine war or subsequent Middle East wars. Most were never able to return to their homeland or to receive compensation for their lost properties and possessions. This audio-visual presentation will share the stories of Palestinian Americans from Jerusalem, Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa based on my interviews and various collections of oral histories, documentary and photographic archives, and memoirs.

This paper focuses on cultural production among diasporic Arab American communities residing in Houston, Texas by examining primary source materials comprised in the Skaff Family Arab American Archive. Through analyzing gala dinner programs of local groups, community bulletins, ads in local newspapers, editorials, correspondence, and institutional and ecclesiastical records, a clear image of capacity building and networking emerges around Arab American diasporic artistic programming. Well known musicians and artists from the Arab world, such as Feyrouz, toured the U.S., and spent time in Houston and the Gulf Coast to raise awareness around political events and humanitarian crises. This paper is concerned in particular with the period between the 1940s-80s and follows modes of community building and arts programming documented in national and regional Arab American publications. Much of the efforts to bring renowned artists and performers to the U.S. appears to have been women-led in many instances, either through women’s volunteer auxiliary groups and news coverage written by Arab American women writers and journalists. Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian women’s groups in Houston participated in, promoted, and documented arts programming that at once gave space for Arab American cultural awareness and preservation, while assisting in raising funds for refugees and immigrants in the U.S. and the Arab world. Their efforts to serve their communities are reflected in the collaborative ties that stretch across national, ethnic, and religious lines and spanned numerous American cities.