‘Little Syria: Early Arab Immigrant Life in America’

 Above image: Syrian-American children whose immigrant families settled in New York’s Syrian quarter

On Wednesday 8^th October, the Andrew Hook Centre was delighted to welcome Professor Akram Khater (North Carolina State University) for the third seminar in the 2014-15 series. Khater is the author of Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921 (2001), Sources in the History of the Modern Middle East (2009) and Embracing the Divine: Passion and Politics in the Christian Middle East (2011). The subject of his talk was the immigrant experience of the first wave of Arab immigrants to the United States, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the immigrants tried to foster a sense of community and identity in their new surroundings. 

Professor Khater began his presentation with a discussion of the immigrant’s motivations for leaving their Eastern Mediterranean homeland. Even at this early stage in the immigrant experience, Khater argued, one finds the historical record plagued by inaccurate assertions of religious persecution as the chief motivating factor. This, Khater explained, belies the relatively unaffected origin point from which they sprang, and speaks more of the advice given to immigrants in Marseilles to exploit the trope of the “Terrible Turk”. Consequentially, the personal or pragmatic motivating factors of many Arab immigrants have been overshadowed by the predominant discourse of religious persecution. A great many Arab immigrants simply sought the better life promised by the economic opportunities of the United States. 

Khater then stressed the importance of early immigrant letters back home in accelerating immigration, as exemplified in the following source: ‘When people of ‘Ayn Arab saw that one man made … [sic] $1000, all of ‘Ayn Arab rushed to come to America … Like a gold rush we left ‘Ayn Arab, there were 72 of us.’ Stories of success, therefore, propelled greater numbers of Arabs to seek a new home in the U.S. For those who made it past the immigration authorities at Ellis Island (of which an estimated 15-20% did not), the reality of life in America garnered mixed responses. For some, New York, or “Nayrik” was like paradise, as indicated in immigrant Saloum Rizk’s statement that ‘“America is a country – but not like Syria. It is really a country like heaven.”’ In contrast, Mikhail Naimy was horrified by the capitalistic impulse in the U.S., describing the nation as the world’s ‘twentieth-century Babylon.’ Thus, the Arab immigrants impressions of America were varied, though Khater noted that daily life was not: For the majority, factory work came to define life in America, and this was reflected in the population dispersal in industrial heartlands such as New York, Detroit, Boston, Chicago and Worchester, Massachusetts, to name a few.

In the second strand of the discussion, Khater turned to the development of an Arab community in the United States and, more specifically, the internal and external tensions that Arabs encountered and negotiated. First, it was critical that the new immigrants retain a sense of group identity, which was achieved primarily through the establishment of multiple newspapers – foremost among them Al-Huda and Mira ‘at al-gharb. In this way, Khater argued, the community created a dialogue and, in this public forum, debated the appropriate levels of acculturation for their people in the United States. One such tension that Khater expanded upon was that of gender: Once in the U.S., Arab immigrants were forced to reconstruct the patriarchal construct of their homeland. Women, who had been expected to remain indoors and adhere to rigid gender roles, found this a difficult prospect in America, compelled as they were to make money for the maintenance of their family, which often involved interacting with men who were not family members, in order to achieve the economic success so coveted. Khater argued that the result of these tensions was often of a hybrid nature, where aspects of Eastern life and customs were fused with that of the West.

Turning to external tensions, Khater discussed the increasing pressures felt by Arab-Americans (and other ethnic groups) to defend their right to enter and remain within the United States. Starting around 1906, and accelerated with the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924, the immigration of Arabs to the U.S. was prohibited, threatening the immigration and naturalisation possibilities for thousands of families. In response, a series of legal cases ensued, many of which explicitly raised the issue of race. With particular reference to the landmark Syrian case Dow v. United States, Khater outlined the importance of naturalisation debates. George Dow had been denied citizenship, despite fulfilling the necessary ‘character’ requirements. Therefore, on account of his race, as a non-Caucasian, his application was denied. The Syrian community mobilised in response, aware as they were of the future threat this posed to their entire community. Dow’s legal counsel, comprised of two Jewish lawyers, presented the court with the argument that, if Jesus Christ was semitic, he would have been allowed into the country, therefore they too should be allowed. Ultimately, this case represented the reconceptualisation of race, in what could be described, in the words of Nell Irvin Painter, as an ‘enlargement of American whiteness.’ In overturning the lower court’s decision to deny George Dow citizenship on the grounds that Syrians “were to be classed as white persons”, this represented the moment in which Christianity was mapped onto race. The implications of this, Khater argued, were far-reaching, in that the assimilation of Arab-Americans under the banner of ‘white’ distorted the correct proportions of institutional/welfare support that they were entitled to receive.

Khater concluded his paper with the interesting observation that Middle Eastern history refuses easy cartographical placement. At the height of Arab-U.S. immigration, the Eastern Mediterranean lost one-third of its total population – and this Arab diaspora perforates the notion of a static national history. Thus, Khater encouraged the audience to think about the importance of revising history to include the constantly moving and fluid immigrant communities. During the question-and-answer session, Khater went on to stress that the main difference between Arab-Americans and other ethnic groups is that being an Arab-American has never been a good thing. Beginning in the 1960s, people of Arab descent were retreating from their Middle-Eastern identity, increasingly identifying as ‘Lebanese’. This, Khater stated, has gained greater momentum in post-9/11 American society. Interestingly, Khater noted the extent to which the ‘Lebanese’ identity has successfully gravitated into mainstream American culture, as evinced in one contemporary advert by insurance company Geico, featuring Count Dracula at a blood bank who exclaims, ‘“I love the Lebanese!”'

Professor Khater’s discussion of ‘Little Syria’ and the early Arab community in America was highly engaging and expansive, extending beyond the early Arab experience and into the present-day. At this moment in time, Middle Eastern politics  are in the international spotlight, with discussions over nationalism and multi-nationalism receiving heightened attention. As such, Khater contributed to the much-needed and important discussion of Arab nations and their dispersed peoples. Formulated through an American lens, the discussion also helped to facilitate a greater empathy toward an ethnic sub-set of the American population often overlooked or, as is often the case, misunderstood. 

 By Rebecca Dunbar

PGR at the University of Glasgow   

The Centre’s seminar series continues with Dr Anthony Stanonis  (Queens University Belfast): ‘Feast of the Mau Mau: Christianity, Conjure and the Origins of Soul Food’. This will be held on Wednesday 22^nd October 2014 in Room 208, 2 University Gardens, at 5:15pm. All very welcome!

‘Really Reading Junot Diaz: Literature of the “new immigration”’

On Thursday 2^nd October, The University of Glasgow was delighted to welcome Dr Maria Lauret (University of Sussex) to the second lecture of the Andrew Hook Centre’s 2014-2015 seminar series. This lecture was co-sponsored by the English Literature Visiting Speaker Series and, as such, attracted a multi-disciplinary audience with diverse research interests and expertise.

Dr Lauret’s lecture focused on the intricate use of language in Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer-Prize winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), described by The New York Times as ‘an extraordinarily vibrant book that’s fueled by adrenaline-powered prose, [and] confidently steered through several decades of history by a madcap, magpie voice that’s equally at home talking about Tolkien and Trujillo.’ Diaz’s multi-lingual ‘immigrant’ literary style is of central interest to Dr Lauret whose research interests encompass, amongst other things, twentieth-century immigration and Americanisation and, particularly, the literature of the ‘new immigration.’ Indian-born American writer Bharati Mukherjee identifies the literature of the new immigration as inherently different from old immigrant literature, which performed an assimilatory function. By contrast, the literature of the new immigration demonstrates the powerful ideological and cultural hold of the homeland on ‘new’ arrivals on U.S. soil. Lauret, drawing on this idea, cited Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus” (1883) which, engraved at the foot of the State of Liberty, reads ‘Give me your tired, your poor/ your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.’ This, Lauret stated, does not apply to the new wave of Latin American immigrants whose traumatic history finds no refuge in the historically complicit North American states.

The lecture began with a close reading of the opening passage of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which Dr Lauret described as both grandiose and expansive, simultaenously highlighting Diaz’s original and important use of language: ‘despite “discovering” the New World the Admiral died miserable and syphilitic, hearing (dique) divine voices.’ Intrigued by the word ‘dique’, Lauret discovered that in Dominican slang, the word, deriving from French-Creole, means ‘supposedly’ or ‘so they say’. In choosing this word, Lauret argued that Diaz makes a daring political statement, namely, in his implicit recognition of Haitian history and culture, so central to (though often denied by) the Dominican Republic. Dr Lauret directed the audience toward Diaz’s political message, calling to mind Toni Morrison’s assertion that racially-marked languages can revolutionise literature. Diaz, through the use of the word ‘dique’, critiques the Dominican disapproval of blackness. It is here, in the minute intricacies of the text’s language, that Diaz’s political agenda is found. 

Thus, in order to fully understand the language and meanings of Diaz’s text, the reader has to delve beyond the surface-level. Diaz does not translate the interwoven foreign words: He leaves it to the reader to probe beneath the surface, in much the same way that immigrants must learn to navigate the nuances of language in their new communities. In this way, Lauret argued, the tables are turned: English, Spanish/Spanglish and Dominican slang are given equal treatment in a narrative that denies the cultural hegemony of one language.

In what prove one of the most intriguing lines of enquiry in the lecture, Dr Lauret stressed the important role of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, alongside Diaz’ short story collections Drown (1996) and This Is How You Lose Her (2012) in initiating and, indeed, mastering, multilingual fusion literature. Dr Lauret noted that fear of contamination of imperial languages by Creoles and fear of miscegenation has traditionally gone hand in hand. The topicality of language discussions in relation to Diaz’s works cannot be overstated, given that, in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population within a generation. Thus, Diaz’s hybridisation of language reflects the writer’s hopes for a post-imperial, fusion literature which treats all languages and cultures with the appropriate level of respect.

Lastly, Dr Lauret drew attention to the problematic nature of the majority of immigrant literature, as identified by Diaz himself: ‘“I feel I’m not a … [sic] native informer [who is] only there to loot them [the immigrant group] of ideas, and words, and images so that you can coon them to the dominant group.’ To the contrary, Lauret persuasively argued that the meaningful and ground-breaking purpose of Diaz’s work is to create a universal language, a language that, in its fusion of alien tongues, is deeply ‘American’. Thus, by ‘really reading’ Junot Diaz and the seamless integration of languages contained within the pages of his novel, Dr Lauret argued that the astute reader participates in the move toward a universal language. In what was a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking discussion, Dr Lauret encouraged the audience to both think about and engage with multi-lingual texts and to re-think the notion of ‘Americanisation’, which, in this literature of the ‘new’ immigration, strives to integrate the language and culture of the ‘new’ immigrant groups within mainstream American culture.

Rebecca Dunbar

PGR at the University of Glasgow

American Impressionism: artistic networks in nineteenth-century Paris

Welcome back to the postgraduate run blog for the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies at the University of Glasgow. Yesterday, 1st October 2014, the Centre was pleased to welcome Dr. Frances Fowle (Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery) to the first of the Centre’s 2014-2015 seminar series. In what was a fascinating lecture, Dr. Fowle discussed ‘American Impressionism: artistic networks in nineteenth-century Paris.’ Below is this listener’s brief summary of the lecture.

Dr Fowle’s lecture focused on the current exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery, titled American Impressionism: A New Vision. Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, A New Vision traces the discovery of Impressionism by American artists in the late 19th century.  On show are over 70 works produced in both Europe and the United States between 1880 and 1900, and the exhibition has received fantastic reviews from the press: The Herald called it "An astonishing show", while The Guardian deemed the exhibition as "...full of radical talent."

Having previously been on show at the Musée des Impressionnismes in Giverny, A New Vision went on display at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in July 2014. The exhibition ends on the 19th October 2014 (so there is still time to go!!) and will move on to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid (Here is the exhibition information: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/whatson/exhibitions/american-impressionism/).

Dr. Fowle began by discussing the four groups with which the exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery is divided into. The first group includes major figures such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler; these artists lived in Paris and were close personal friends of the French Impressionists, especially Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. The second group of American artists trained in Paris and/or settled near Monet at Giverny in 1887. The third group of American Impressionists worked in the USA, and includes William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam and Theodore Robinson. The last American group, known as 'The Ten', championed Impressionist art practices in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

After this introduction to the exhibition, Dr. Fowle began her talk by displaying and analyzing the sequence of women and children that shows the great Mary Cassatt at her most singular. For example, in one painting – a profoundly tender painting from 1890 of a child curled comfortably into a woman's body – Cassatt captures the domesticity of contemporary female life whilst showcasing the intimate bond between a mother and her child. Of interest for this particular painting is the fact that the mother has her back to the viewer, and as Dr. Fowle suggested, this can be interpreted in a variety of ways.

Dr. Fowle also highlighted that Cassatt objected to being described as an impressionist on the grounds that she was an “independent artist”. That vignette speaks volumes not only about Cassatt’s character but also about so-called ‘American Impressionism’ in general, a movement which never regarded itself as an offshoot of a weightier French parent. With this in mind, Dr. Fowle asked the audience to consider the question - what actually is ‘American Impressionism’?

One of the highlights of Dr. Fowle’s talk was her discussion of John Singer Sargent. Just as Cassatt had cultivated a close friendship with Edgar Degas, Sargent sparked a fruitful friendship with Claude Monet in Giverny, near Paris. Dr. Fowle introduced us to this by displaying the image below, where Sargent, who succeeded in Giverny where others had failed, paints Monet painting outdoors in the great studio of nature:

Sargent first met Monet in 1876 at the Second Impressionists Exhibit in Paris – the Impressionists had to have their own exhibits since the Salon, the official art exhibit of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, refused to display their paintings – but the two artists were closest ten years later and painted together at Giverny. Sargent admired the way that Monet worked out of doors, and imitated some of his subjects and methods in sketches such as the one above. It is characteristic of Sargent to give a human view of Monet's practice and of the patience of his wife, who sits behind him. Their friendship endured, and Dr. Fowle did a fantastic job of contrasting their works and showing the influence each took from one another to improve their works.

Dr. Fowle ended with John Leslie Breck's interpretation of the haystacks motif. These twelve small paintings each display the same vista but at different times of day. Individually one or two stand out, but their power is in their collection. They were apparently painted over the course of three days and they are a brilliant group of works to be viewed together.

To summarise, in her lecture Dr. Fowle mixed biography, art, history and criticism to create a brilliantly detailed picture of the story behind ‘American Impressionism.’ She suggested the ways in which art is both shaped and changed by the environment in which it is created, and interestingly left the audience to ponder the meaning of the term ‘American Impressionism.’ For example, Dr. Fowles made it clear that ‘impressionism’ is hard enough to pin down in art historical terms, never mind ‘American impressionism.’

Dr. Fowle’s lecture was informative, and as suggested by its attendance, was highly popular. And indeed, it certainly made this listener plan a visit to the exhibition before it concludes on October 19^th, which, from the impression of those in the room who had already attended, will undoubtedly prove worthwhile.

By Joe Ryan-Hume

PGR at the University of Glasgow

The Centre’s seminar series continues with Dr. Marian Lauret (University of Sussex) ‘Really Reading Junot Diaz: Literature of the “new immigration.”’ This is in collaboration with the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow, and forms part of the 'English and American Literature Lecture Series', co-sponsored by the Andrew Hook Centre. It will be held on Thursday 2^nd October in Room 202, 4 University Gardens, at 5:15pm. All very welcome!

Fourteenth Annual Gordon Lecture in American Studies

On Thursday 8^th May, The Centre for American Studies finished its 2013-2014 seminar series with the Fourteenth Annual Gordon Lecture in American Studies.  Papers were presented by guest speakers Professor Richard Blackett (Vanderbilt University) and Professor David Blight (Yale University) that focused on the issue of abolitionism, primarily through a discussion of the Underground Railroad and author Frederick Douglass.

Professor Richard Blackett’s paper focused on the legacy of abolitionism through an examination of the Underground Railroad.  Through a microcosmic analysis of southern white communities and their population’s reactions to the Railroad’s successes in helping slaves escape north, Blackett detailed the nature of their struggle for freedom.  He did this through a case-by-case analysis of successful and unsuccessful escape attempts, beginning with the story of Henry Banks.  In an intriguing section of Blackett’s paper, he noted the various letters that Banks sent to his slave-master after escaping.  In the first letter he related how he had reached New York through Philadelphia via Baltimore, when in the given time this would not have been possible.  The second letter maintained that Banks was heading to California, stirring new hope in the slave-owner that he would soon retrieve him.  However as Blackett argued, the initial two letters were meant to confuse Bank’s slave-owner in his pursuit, a strategy which proved to be effective when Banks would later pen a third letter to the slave-owner from the safety of Canada.   

Blackett continued with an account of free black Nathan James and slave drayman Alfred Savage’s attempts to help a Nashville slave escape north.  Having arranged for a pine box to be delivered to the leader of the Underground Railroad, Levi Coffin (under the pseudonym Hannah Johnson) in Cincinnati, Ohio, it accidentally broke open after being thrown on to the train platform of Seymour, Indiana, revealing Aleck inside of it.  Although the local court dealt with the key figures swiftly, with Aleck being sent back to Nashville, Savage sentenced to fifteen lashes and James imprisoned, Blackett argued that the local event illustrated the vulnerability of slave communities to fugitive slaves, and the problems of northern attempts to help them escape.  Amidst a flurry of public speculation over the extent of outsider influences involved in the escape attempt, Aleck was brought to court to identify the nature of the conspiracy, in an attempt to expose the workings of the Underground Railroad.  Although local communities such as Seymour, Indiana, became more acutely aware of how to recognise suspicious behaviour and readied themselves against successive escape attempts, Blackett argued that many slaves continued to escape regardless.  To complete his analysis he noted that the escape attempt undermined southern dominance over slavery, showing how James, Savage and Aleck had disrupted the social and political order of the small southern community.  In finishing his paper, Blackett argued that it is this sort of examination of local communities and their reactions to fugitive slaves that is crucial to understanding abolitionism.

Professor David Blight followed Blackett’s excellent paper with an analysis of Frederick Douglass in the 1850s, and his relationship with abolitionism in the pre-Civil War United States.  Blight began by noting his own research into another ex-slave, James McCune Smith, an African-American physician and abolitionist who was also an alumnus of the University of Glasgow.  Blight went on to emphasise the importance of treating abolitionist movements such as the Underground Railroad in more intricate detail, and in doing so, hopefully avoid the mythologies that surround them.  In the first section of his paper, Blight detailed Douglass’ escape to Canada, doing so with a great deal of passion and suspense as he read excerpts from his letters.  He went on to note Douglass’ successes as an orator in the Glasgow and Edinburgh lecture circuits as a free man.  After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, his anger towards slave-owners only increased further.  In the following year Douglass’ fury would escalate to the point where he publicly advocated that every slave-owner should be killed.  His venom towards those who captured fugitive slaves led him to declare slave-hunting (or “Bloodhoundism” as he titled it) America’s national sport, where rather than capturing animals, Americans were in the pursuit of slaves.  Douglass’ anger in this period was detailed by Blight as his fostering of a rhetoric of violence in the attempt to find a logic of violence that would justify his bloodlust for slave-owners.  In his attempts to do so, Blight detailed his relationship with abolitionist John Brown.

Douglass and Brown’s relationship developed over the course of eight to nine meetings.  Blight noted that although much scholarly thought on their relationship tended to argue that Brown intensified Douglass’ anger, he was of the opinion this was not the case, as Douglass’ own history as a slave provided ample material for this.  Blight characterised their relationship as one that agreed on issues, but not necessarily on tactics, exemplified in Douglass’ disillusionment with Brown after his raid on Harpers Ferry.

 

The issues raised in these papers were discussed in the questions and answers afterwards.  The first questioner asked Professor Blackett about the effects of white male involvement in the Underground Railroad’s activities, and how this related to his discussion of southern communities.  Unlike fellow slaves or black free men who may have participated in the organisation’s activities, Blackett commented that white male involvement was deemed particularly traitorous by southern communities.  In another question, Blight was asked if Douglass’ anger ever diminished in his later years.  Blight argued that the arrival of the Civil War allowed Douglass to vent his anger in the ongoing conflict, and additionally expend it in his letters and lectures, but he continued to call for the killing of slave-owners as he had done previously.  Although Blight noted that after the war, the ageing Douglass calmed down, he was incensed at the betrayal of Reconstruction. In a later question about John Brown’s involvement in the Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856, Professor Blight highlighted the complexities of the massacre, noting that none of the five men killed were in fact slave-owners.  Noting Brown’s numerous visits to Douglass’ home after the massacre, Blight went on to theorise on Douglass’ opinion of the massacre.  In his answer, he leaned towards the suggestion that Douglass was aware of the massacre, but due to his support of Brown, did not discuss it in his letters.  In an answer that recognised the complex and contrasting opinions of Brown that exist in contemporary United States culture, he extended this to its historical setting with Douglass, and his own omissions of Brown’s abolitionist activities.

Both Professor Blackett and Professor Blight’s papers dealt with their respective topics with touches of poignancy and humour.  In concluding The Centre for American Studies’ 2013-2014 seminar series, the Fourteenth Annual Gordon Lecture proved to be an enlightening examination, expanding social, national, political and racial treatments of abolitionism in the pre-Civil War United States.  

- James Nixon

PGR at the University of Glasgow