Arab American Women Poets and the "Rewriting" of Self

Abstract

Arab American women who are defeating fragmentation, rootlessness and stereotyping by deriving strength from their dual cultural roots. A review of the most recent poetry by Arab American women, particularly after September 11, reveals strong tendencies of a rewriting of self, based on the new religious, political and social challenges resulting from the traumatic event that predetermines how the American society reads and perceives them. The process of self - rewriting can be understood better through what Ostendorf called strain of ethnification which he explains as a simultaneous disjunction of the old and the search for a new integration of artistic self, a recreation of a cultural homme and sociopolitical citoyen.