Definition
The first wave of Arab-American immigration, largely Christians from Syria and Lebanon, began in the 1880s and continued into the 1920s. The second wave, about half of them Muslims, arrived after World War II and continues to the present day.
An early and important force in Arab-American literature is Ameen Rihani, a Lebanese-born scholar and diplomat, whose The Book of Khalid (1911), a novel written in free verse records the struggles and triumphs in the immigrant experience. The most important early work of Arab-American literature is Kahil Gibran's world-famous The Prophet (1923), a meditative prose poem, extolling love as the central fact of the human condition. In America alone, this book, which has been translated into 13 languages, has sold over more than 4 million copies.Some later Arab-American writers include the talented William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, and Vance Bourjaily, but neither chose to examine the ethnic experience in their work. The major breakthrough occurred with the publication of Grape Leaves (1982) an anthology of Arab-American poetry, which included work by three outstandingly talented poets, Samuel Hazo, D. H. Melhem, and Etel Adnan. Recent notable novelists include Naomi Shihab Nye. Equally talented is Diana Abu-Jabere; Arabian Jazz (1994), a work whose feminist perspective casts a cold eye on male dominance in both Arab and American societies, but her main character represents the best of both worlds, a Palestinian refugee who loves jazz.
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