VOA标准英语2009年-Seeing History Through Arab-American E

Mohamed Elshinnawi | Washington, DC 01 December 2009

Author Alia Malek says she wrote "A Country Called Amreeka" to put a "human face" on the Arab-American community, and to counter the public fear and misunderstanding fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Alia Malek, a successful Syrian-American civil rights attorney, was shocked by what she saw as a dangerous and misguided public backlash against Arab-Americans. Malek was confident that somebody would write a book that would put a human face on the Arab-American community and educate Americans about a culture that was so poorly understood.
 
"People seemed to think that Arabs only existed 'over there,' that there weren't actually Arab-Americans who had been part of the United States since the late 1800s.  And I sort of went about my life practicing law, thinking that inevitably¹, somebody was going to write a book like this. And by the time I decided² to do a career switch and go to journalism³ school at Colombia University four years later, nobody had yet written the book that I thought was so inevitable⁴.  So that is why I decided to write the book," Malek says.

Arab-Americans assimilated and became invisible

 

Her new book is titled, "A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories."  It is a collection of narratives⁵ about some of the 3.5 million people of Arab descent who live in the United States - individuals with roots in Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Syria. Set against the backdrop of the past 40 years of American history and international developments, Malek's subjects share their stories and demonstrate that, even as they play football, work assembly lines and hold public office, they have remained largely shut out of the national conversation.

Malek, who began her legal career as a civil rights attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, contends that U.S immigration laws before 1965 were racially biased⁶.  And she says they hindered the naturalization of Arab immigrants to such an extent that most Americans were unaware⁷ there was an Arab-American community.
 
"I think that is why they assimilated and became almost invisible. And then, in that post-1965- immigration pop culture, [in] the media, Arab-Americans were not part of their discourse⁸, it was not a part of the American consciousness. You did not have a TV show of Arab-Americans; there was something that remained very foreign about 'Arabs'," she says.

Stories mark historic moments in past 40 years

Each chapter of "A Country Called Amreeka" focuses on a major historical event as seen through the eyes of an Arab-American, allowing readers to relive the moment in that person's  skin. In the chapter exploring how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict played out for Arabs living in the United States, Malek tells the story of Luba, the wife of a Palestinian refugee who yearns⁹ for her hometown of Ramallah after it is occupied by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

In one passage from the book, Luba struggles to explain her heartache to her young American-born daughter, Mona, whose puzzlement at her mother's distress¹⁰ highlights the gap between Arab heritage and life in Amreeka:

"Now all Jerusalem is with the Jews and now it is Ramallah's turn to be taken," Luba explained. "And that is why I am crying and that is why I want you to shut up and stop asking questions!"

But Mona continued: "The Jews, aren't they human beings? Aren't they people?"

"Yes, of course they are human beings," Luba responded. "They are people like us."

"Then why can't they be in Ramallah?" Mona demanded.

"Mona, this is your house. Do you want your neighbors to come and tell you to get out and take your home and they live here?  Is this right?" (Malek, 2009).
   
In another chapter, the reader sees the 1963 burning of a black church in segregated¹¹ Birmingham, Alabama, through the eyes of a dark-skinned Lebanese-American. There's a Palestinian-American surrounded by anti-Arab violence during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and a homosexual Arab-American who was afraid to be gay in the Middle East and is now afraid to be an Arab in America.

And there is Lance Corporal Abraham, a Yemeni-American Marine¹² who is deployed¹³ to Iraq in the 2003 U.S. invasion.  Because he is an Arab, Abraham is rebuked¹⁴ as a traitor¹⁵ by an Iraqi mother, whose two young daughters had been killed during a U.S. military operation.

Malek says,"I hope people sort of sympathize with Abraham and the difficulties he was going through, both as a young married father with a wife half-way across the world, and also the concerns he has as he and his Marine brothers come back alive from the war, as well as just seeing 'the good, the bad and the ugly' of the American invasion of Iraq."

Book mentions earlier immigrants

The author also recalls the Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian Christians¹⁶ who were part of America's first great wave of immigration starting in the 1880s, and who found work in the mines and opened grocery stores. She examines the impact of the 1965 immigration reform legislation that allowed Arabs to escape political upheaval¹⁷ in their own countries and settle in Detroit, Michigan, where many found work Ford¹⁸ Motor Company assembly lines. Malek hopes her American readers will come to know these people in a new and more positive light.

"I hope they can see that the history of Arab-Americans is basically as old as the history of a lot of immigrant groups that we easily accept as part of the American mosaic¹⁹. And that they see that we are in American society; we are voters and consumers and producers and teachers, and husbands and wives and neighbors and everything else that we think that other fellow Americans are. I mean, there needs to be rightful re-insertion into the American imagination of the place of Arab-Americans," she says.

 

1 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

2 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

3 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

4 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

5 narratives   

记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分

参考例句：

• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning. 结婚一向是许多小说的终点，然而也是一个伟大的开始。
• This is one of the narratives that children are fond of. 这是孩子们喜欢的故事之一。

6 biased   

a.有偏见的

参考例句：

• a school biased towards music and art 一所偏重音乐和艺术的学校
• The Methods: They employed were heavily biased in the gentry's favour. 他们采用的方法严重偏袒中上阶级。

7 unaware   

a.不知道的，未意识到的

参考例句：

• They were unaware that war was near. 他们不知道战争即将爆发。
• I was unaware of the man's presence. 我没有察觉到那人在场。

8 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

9 yearns   

渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Every man yearns for sympathy in sorrow. 每个遇到不幸的人都渴望得到同情。
• What I dread is to get into a rut. One yearns for freshness of thought and ideas. 我害怕的就是墨守成规。人总是向往新思想和新观念的。

10 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

11 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

12 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

13 deployed   

（尤指军事行动）使展开( deploy的过去式和过去分词 )； 施展； 部署； 有效地利用

参考例句：

• Tanks have been deployed all along the front line. 沿整个前线已部署了坦克。
• The artillery was deployed to bear on the fort. 火炮是对着那个碉堡部署的。

14 rebuked   

责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The company was publicly rebuked for having neglected safety procedures. 公司因忽略了安全规程而受到公开批评。
• The teacher rebuked the boy for throwing paper on the floor. 老师指责这个男孩将纸丢在地板上。

15 traitor   

n.叛徒，卖国贼

参考例句：

• The traitor was finally found out and put in prison.那个卖国贼终于被人发现并被监禁了起来。
• He was sold out by a traitor and arrested.他被叛徒出卖而被捕了。

16 Christians   

n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Christians of all denominations attended the conference. 基督教所有教派的人都出席了这次会议。
• His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. 他关于耶稣的小说激起了基督教徒的公愤。

17 upheaval   

n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱

参考例句：

• It was faced with the greatest social upheaval since World War Ⅱ.它面临第二次世界大战以来最大的社会动乱。
• The country has been thrown into an upheaval.这个国家已经陷入动乱之中。

18 Ford   

n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过

参考例句：

• They were guarding the bridge,so we forded the river.他们驻守在那座桥上，所以我们只能涉水过河。
• If you decide to ford a stream,be extremely careful.如果已决定要涉过小溪，必须极度小心。

19 mosaic   

n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的

参考例句：

• The sky this morning is a mosaic of blue and white.今天早上的天空是幅蓝白相间的画面。
• The image mosaic is a troublesome work.图象镶嵌是个麻烦的工作。