LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
spring 2003
Student Research Project
The
Arab-American Woman Poet:
No
people in the world manifest such enthusiastic admiration for literary
expression and are so moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs. Modern
audiences in Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo can be stirred to the highest degree by
the recital of poems, only vaguely comprehended, and by the delivery of orations
in the classical tongue, though it be only partially understood. The rhythm, the
rhyme, the music, produce on them the effect of what they call "lawful
magic" (sihr halal).
Philip K Hitti, History of the Arabs
I
wanna be read, loved, memorized. I wanna be a poem that changes lives.
Suheir Hammad
The topic of Arab-American women poets is new to me, but as I uncover it and discover its intricacies and depth, I feel as if I am being reunited with a long lost yet somehow familiar friend. Arab-Americans are a rapidly growing minority immigrant group in the United States, numbering around 2 million. Although they are not a one of the minority groups covered in the Seminar in American Minority Literature, I believe that they play an increasingly important role in our community and in our country’s history, politics and culture. My quest to broaden my knowledge about the Arab-American literary movement stemmed largely from the tragic crumbling of the Twin Towers, which I witnessed as a wake up call for all of what humanity conveniently lumps into “civilizations”. While the flap of a butterfly’s wings in the Middle East may have set off a tornado in the United States, I believe that the pen will always be mightier than the sword, and in this war of words between East and West, I am determined to see the phoenix rise from the ashes.
I.
The Birth of the Arab-American Literary Movement:
Although my journal heading focuses on Arab-American women poets, I felt it necessary to include a little background information on the Arab-American Literary Movement in order to set a stage for the journal to unfold upon. The Arab-American literary tradition began at the turn of the century, as the result of a large influx of Lebanese and Syrian immigrants to the United States. In the 1920’s a group called “Al Rabital al Qalamiyah” or the “New York Pen League” surfaced. The poets and writers who made up this body were known as “Al-Mahjar”, or the “immigrant poets”. In keeping with Arab culture and the times, four men of Syrian and Lebanese origin, Ameen Rihani, Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy and Elia Abu Mad are recognized as the founders of this movement, which remained male-dominated for decades (Abinader 2000). The following excerpt is from the Ameen Rihani Organization:
Ameen Rihani is the founding father of
Arab-American literature. His early English writings mark the beginning of a
body of literature that is Arab in its concern, culture and characteristic,
English in language, and American in spirit and platform. He is the first Arab
to write English essays, poetry, novels, short stories, art critiques, and
travel chronicles…Ameen
Rihani is also considered to be the founder of "Adab Al-Mahjar"
(Immigrant Literature). He is the first Arab who wrote and published complete
literary works in the U. S. (New York). His writings pioneered the movement of
modern Arabic literature that played a leading role in the Arab Renaissance.
At the movement’s onset, the optimism of young immigrants in search of the “American dream” permeated the Arab-American literary canon. As the writers sought assimilation in their newfound land of progress and opportunity, they steered away from imagery and subject matter that evoked the “old world” or the “tribe”, but rather focused on expounding on the United States and what if offered to their new lives. With the resurgence of the civil rights movement and the emergence of the African-American voice in the 1960s, other ethnically diverse cultural groups began surfacing and voicing a desire for their deserved place in U.S. history and literature. It was not until the 1970’s, however, that Arab-American writers—including women—would gain a voice (Abinader).
With this resurgence came a new tone and set of themes for Arab-American poetry and narrative. While their predecessors had shied away from nostalgia and fixating on the homeland in their works, these poets, playwrights and writers were imbued with a fresh political and social assertiveness. As the group grew into a hyphenated minority, the currents that run through most ethnic literature: exile, cultural conflict, the family, “loss and survival”, “assimilation or resistance”, “voice and choice”, the “new American”…emerged as the hot topics (see course objectives). Much of the Arab-Americans’ socio-political frustration was expressed through powerful images and metaphors evoking the mother country, the tribe, the desert, and the native music and cuisine.
While this return home, as it were, empowered Arab-Americans as an ethnic and cultural minority group during the 70’s, critics and members of the movement have warned against creating a contrived canon that would threaten to infantilize or oversimplify the intricacy of the Arab-American experience. Writer and anthologist Sherif Elmusa entreats, "poets, critics, members of other tribes, please let's not reduce the poetry of the tribe into a sheepskin of poems about the tribe" (ibid). This statement does not mean to suggest that all references to Arab culture be eliminated, but rather that there should be a fusion of the Arab heritage with the here-and-now of each individual’s American reality.
This push to find a third way between the old and the new is particularly visible in the work of Arab-American women poets, who not only find themselves dubbed a “double minority”, but also too often typecast according to religious or cultural stereotypes as either veiled and repressed, or inhabiting a species of metaphorical harem in which they play the role of the odalisque. Writer and poet Lisa Suhair Majaj posits, "...we need not stronger and more definitive boundaries of identity, but rather an expansion and a transformation of these boundaries. In broadening and deepening our understanding of ethnicity, we are not abandoning our Arabness, but making room for the complexity of our experiences" (ibid).
Apart from the subtle amalgamation of beauty, novelty and diversity that I encounter in Arab-American women’s poetry, I find that it quells a multitude of pertinent needs in our society. As with many women’s movements, the search for agency is often confronted with socio-cultural or gender-based stumbling blocks such as racial prejudice or stereotyping. In light of the present-day political state of the world, being an Arab-American woman is loaded with weighty implications. Nevertheless, young poets such as Mohja Kahf, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Suheir Hammad, are making their voices heard and taking a stance that goes beyond a mere rehashing of their Arab heritage. Where Arab-American poetry used to be filled with recurrent allusions to the homeland, the tribe, and native food, Arab-American women poets are branching out to create and embrace newer and timelier themes to reflect the cards that American life deals them everyday.
I have chosen three themes that I see as emergent in Arab-American women’s poetry. They are as follows: 1) eroticism, 2) religion and 3) 9/11. While “Orientalist” literature and Arab poetry in particular have had a reputation for sensuality for centuries, the publication of poetry of an erotic nature by women is a more novel phenomenon in a culture with traditional religious and social values. Although Arab-Americans come from a diverse religious make up, a large percentage of them are devout Muslims or Orthodox Christians. In many circles, the thought of a woman writing about sexuality remains controversial and taboo.
I chose religion as my second theme (although religion and eroticism frequently dovetail) because as ethno-national and religious differences increasingly become markers in our multiethnic society, religion rears its head as an identifier in Arab-American poetry among Muslims, Christians and Jews. Due in part to the increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric over the past twenty years, many Arab-Americans have chosen to adopt a reactionary return to Muslim values, a sort of a “Muslim Pride” stance against what many view as the Western imperialism of globalization. As a result, Muslim imagery and in particular, references to prayer or holidays can be found throughout contemporary poetry.
My last choice of theme, 9/11, seemed a necessary one. Necessary because it was the impetus behind by growing interest in the subject matter and necessary because of the socio-cultural, political, metaphysical, ethical and metaphorical implications left in its wake. Without further ado, I will proceed with the journal entries, which I have grouped into a poetry sampling of the three aforementioned themes, followed by several article reviews.
A. Eroticism as
Liberation and Voice:
Exotic
don’t wanna be your exotic
some delicate fragile colorful
bird imprisoned
caged
in a land foreign to the stretch of her wings
don’t wanna be your exotic
women
everywhere are just like me
some taller darker nicer
than me
but like me just the same
women
everywhere carry my name on their spirits
don’t wanna
don’t seduce yourself with my otherness
my hair wasn’t put there to entice you
into some mysterious black voodoo
the bat of my lashes against each other
ain’t some dark desert beat it’s just a blink
get over it
don’t wanna be your exotic
your lovin’ of my beauty ain’t more than
funky fornication plain pink perversion
in fact nasty necrophilia
cause my beauty is dead to you
I am dead to you
not your harem girl geisha doll banana picker
pom pom girl pum pum shorts coffee maker
town whore belly dancer private dancer
la malinche venus hottentot laundry girl
your immaculate vessel emasculating princess
don’t wanna be
your erotic
not your exotic
by Suheir Hammad
More
than One Way to Break a Fast
Your lips are dark, my love,
and fleshy, like a date
And night is honeyslow
in coming, long to wait
I have fasted, darling,
daylong all Ramadan
but your mouth -- so sweet,
so near -- the hours long!
Grant but one taste -- one kiss!
You know what good reward
feeders of fasters gain
from our clement Lord
See how the fruits are ripe
and ready, O servant of God
Kiss me -- it's time, it's time!
And let us earn reward
By Mohja Kahf
We are going to dip English backward
by its Shakespearean tresses
arcing its spine like a crescent
We are going to rewrite English in Arabic
(Arabic script: how sweet, how sweet)
and all the languages of our blood
We are going to give English the makeover of its lifetime,
darkening the rims of its eyes with Hindi antimony,
making it blush Farsi roses
(Arabic script: the night, the night)
We are going to make English dizzy
until English vomits its history,
Norman, Saxon, Celtic, down
to its Druid dregs
We won’t stop playing with English
We are the new bullies in the schoolyard
and we like the merry-go-round of nouns and adjectives
and onomatopoetics and objective correlatives
We will bewilder English in Aramaic of Jesus
(Arabic script: My Lord, my lord, why have you forsaken me?)
We know its biblical heart better than it knows itself
and hold the blades of these lilies-of-the-valley
against its jugular vein
We are going to make English love us
And kiss us and explore us with its tongues
Then we will play hard-to-get
and English will have to phone
and leave a message after message of desire on our machines
English will have to learn what to say to please us:
(Arabic script: “I humbled myself until even me enemy wept for me.”)
English has never tasted anything this purple,
Seen mangos this bursting, trickling down its poems,
pomegranates spraying the tart red seeds
over its stories like white white linen
English has never smelled the cardamom this ecstatic
or breathed rhetoric this thick with love
English will come to us hoarse with passion
we will have taught English to have
and English will never be the same and will never regret us
Although, after this night of intense copulation,
we may slaughter English in its bed and redeem our honor,
even while pregnant with English’s bastard
(Arabic script: “Here comes the dawn upon us like a fire.”)
By Mohja Kahf
To hear readings by the poet, visit: http://www.nitle.org/arabworld/audiovisual.php?module_id=7&selected_feed=113
B. Religion as
Identifier of Self:
You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.
At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed mamool.
This morning we lit the slim candles
which bend over at the waist by noon.
For once the priests weren't fighting
in church for the best spots to stand.
As a boy, my father listened to them fight.
This is partly why he prays in no language
but his own. Why I press my lips
to every exception.
A woman opens a window – here and here
and here –
placing a vase of blue flowers
on an orange cloth. I follow her.
she is making soup from what she had left
in the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean.
She is leaving nothing out.
By Naomi Shihab Nye
Talisman
it is written
the act of writing is
holy words are
sacred and your breath
brings out the
god in them
i write these words
quickly repeat them
softly to myself
this talisman for you
fold this prayer
around your neck fortify
your back with these
whispers
may you walk ever
loved and in love
know the sun
for warmth the moon
for direction
may these words always
remind you your breath
is sacred words
bring out the god
in you
By Suheir Hammad
Move Over
We are the spreaders of prayer rugs
In highway gas stations at dawn
We are the fasters at company banquets
before sunsets at Ramadan
We wear veils and denim,
prayer caps and Cubs caps
as over the prairie to the halal pizzeria
we go. We don’t know
what to do at weddings:
wear white and cut the cake?
wear red and receive garlands?
rap songs or tambourines?
It doesn’t matter. Enough to have
a pita bread, a carbonated drink,
e-mail to read, and thou
We will intermarry and commingle
and multiply, oh, how we’ll multiply
Muhammad-lovers in the motley
miscellany of the land
By Mohja Kahf
The Fires
Have Begun
There is a World Love Center in
my ribcage
There is a World Hate Center
inside me too
The fires have begun. The fires
have begun,
And I don’t know which one
Is going to crumble first.
By Mohja Kahf
First Writing
Since
1. there have been no words.
I have not written one word.
no poetry in the ashes south of canal street.
no prose in the refrigerated trucks driving debris and
DNA.
not one word.
today is a week, and seven is of heavens, gods, science.
evident out my kitchen window is an abstract reality.
sky where once was steel.
smoke where once was flesh.
fire in the city air and I feared for my sister's life in a
way never before.
and then, and now, I fear for the rest of us.
first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot's heart
failed, the plane's engine died.
then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now.
please god, after the second plane, please, don't let it be anyone who looks
like my brothers.
I do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill.
I have never been so hungry that I willed hunger I have never been so angry as
to want to control a gun over a pen.
not really.
even as a woman, as a Palestinian, as a broken human being.
never this broken.
more than ever, I believe there is no difference.
the most privileged nation, most Americans do not know the difference between
Indians, Afghanis, Syrians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus.
more than ever, there is no difference.
2. thank you Korea for kimchi and bibim bob, and corn tea
and the genteel smiles of the wait staff at Wonjo the smiles never revealing the
heat of the food or how tired they must be working long midtown shifts.
thank you Korea, for the belly craving that brought me into the city late the
night before and diverted my daily train ride into the world trade center.
there are plenty of thank yous in NY right now.
thank you for my lazy procrastinating late ass.
thank you to the germs that had me call in sick.
thank you, my attitude, you had me fired the week before.
thank you for the train that never came, the rude NYer who stole my cab going
downtown.
thank you for the sense my mama gave me to run.
thank you for my legs, my eyes, my life.
3. the dead are called lost and their families hold up shaky printouts in front of us through screens smoked up.
we are looking for Iris, mother of three.
please call with any information.
we are searching for Priti, last seen on the 103rd floor.
she was talking to her husband on the phone and the line went.
please help us find George, also known as Adel.
his family is waiting for him with his favorite meal.
I am looking for my son, who was delivering coffee.
I am looking for my sister girl, she started her job on Monday.
I am looking for peace.
I am looking for mercy.
I am looking for evidence of compassion.
any evidence of life.
I am looking for life.
4. Ricardo on the radio said in his accent thick as yucca,
"I will feel so much better when the first bombs drop over there.
and my friends feel the same way."
on my block, a woman was crying in a car parked and
stranded in hurt.
I offered comfort, extended a hand she did not see before she said,
"we’re gonna burn them so bad, I swear, so bad."
my hand went to my head and my head went to the numbers within it of the dead
Iraqi children, the dead in Nicaragua.
the dead in Rwanda who had to vie with fake sport wrestling for America's
attention.
yet when people sent emails saying, this was bound to
happen, lets not forget U.S. transgressions, for half a second I felt resentful.
hold up with that, cause I live here, these are my friends and fam, and it could
have been me in those buildings, and we're not bad people, do not support
America's bullying.
can I just have a half second to feel bad?
if I can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to mourn and to resist mass murder, I might be alright.
thank you to the woman who saw me brinking my cool and
blinking back tears.
she opened her arms before she asked "do you want a hug?" a big white
woman, and her embrace was the kind only people with the warmth of flesh can
offer.
I wasn't about to say no to any comfort.
"my brother's in the navy," I said.
"and we're Arabs".
"wow, you got double trouble".
word.
5. one more person ask me if I knew the hijackers.
one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in.
one more person assume no Arabs or Muslims were killed.
one more person assume they know me, or that I represent a people.
or that a people represent an evil.
or that evil is as simple as a flag and words on a page.
we did not vilify all white men when Mcveigh bombed
Oklahoma.
America did not give out his family's addresses or where he went to church.
or blame the bible or Pat Robertson.
and when the networks air footage of Palestinians dancing
in the street, there is no apology that hungry children are bribed with sweets
that turn their teeth brown.
that correspondents edit images.
that archives are there to facilitate lazy and inaccurate journalism.
and when we talk about holy books and hooded men and death, why do we never mention the KKK?
if there are any people on earth who understand how New York is feeling right now, they are in the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
6. today it is ten days.
last night Bush waged war on a man once openly funded by the CIA.
I do not know who is responsible.
read too many books, know too many people to believe what I am told.
I don't give a fuck about Bin Laden.
his vision of the world does not include me or those I love.
and petitions have been going around for years trying to get the U.S.
sponsored Taliban out of power.
shit is complicated, and I don't know what to think.
but I know for sure who will pay.
in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor.
women will have to bury children, and support themselves through grief.
"either you are with us, or with the terrorists" - meaning keep your
people under control and your resistance censored.
meaning we got the loot and the nukes.
in America, it will be those amongst us who refuse blanket
attacks on the shivering.
those of us who work toward social justice, in support of civil liberties, in
opposition to hateful foreign policies.
I have never felt less American and more New Yorker,
particularly Brooklyn, than these past days.
the stars and stripes on all these cars and apartment windows represent the dead
as citizens first, not family members, not lovers.
I feel like my skin is real thin, and that my eyes are only
going to get darker.
the future holds little light.
my baby brother is a man now, and on alert, and praying five times a day that the orders he will take in a few days time are righteous and will not weigh his soul down from the afterlife he deserves.
both my brothers - my heart stops when I try to pray - not
a beat to disturb my fear.
one a rock god, the other a sergeant, and both Palestinian, practicing Muslim,
gentle men.
both born in Brooklyn and their faces are of the archetypal Arab man, all
eyelashes and nose and beautiful color and stubborn hair.
what will their lives be like now?
over there is over here.
7. all day, across the river, the smell of burning rubber
and limbs floats through.
the sirens have stopped now.
the advertisers are back on the air.
the rescue workers are traumatized.
the skyline is brought back to human size.
no longer taunting the gods with its height.
I have not cried at all while writing this.
I cried when I saw those buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart.
I have never owned pain that needs to spread like that.
and I cry daily that my brothers return to our mother safe and whole.
there is no poetry in this.
there are causes and effects.
there are symbols and ideologies.
mad conspiracy here, and information we will never know.
there is death here, and there are promises of more.
there is life here.
anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting, but breathing for sure.
and if there is any light to come, it will shine from the eyes of those who look
for peace and justice after the rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix
has risen.
affirm life.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life.
By Suheir Hammad
Review of “A
Rainbow of Poets Who Rhyme From Life”:
By
Robin Pogrebin for the New York Times, April 18, 2003
As poetry “slams” and performance poetry gain in popularity among America’s youth, brave new experiments in entertainment such as "Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway" are seeking to fuse the hip-hop nature of contemporary poetry with the deeper message behind it, in order to create a multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural quilt of talent.
“Def Poetry Jam” consists of
nine young poets from a variety of backgrounds, who perform their works
interspersed with pieces of music improvised by a DJ.
Although personal feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, the show has
had mixed reviews and irregular attendance, and ad lines have catered to
audiences by calling it “Party with Words”.
Aware of the cutthroat nature of Broadway, hip-hop entrepreneur and the
show’s producer, Russell Simmons, said of his endeavor, “It’s an explosion
of diversity that’s necessary…these people
represent a lot of people…their heart became the drumbeat.
Their words matter.”
Among
the fledgling stars of “Def Poetry” is Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American
poet who grew up in Brooklyn. Her
poems stand out as the most activist pieces in the show, which she views as radical
because “it includes people of so many different shades.”
Hammad says, “It’s already changed the face of poetry.
It’s changed the face of Broadway…I don’t know if it’s
revolutionary…I think we’ve opened the door that they cannot close now.”
Review
of “Arab-American Writers, Uneasy in Two Worlds”:
By Dinitia Smith For the New York
Times, February 19, 2003
In the aftermath of 9/11 and in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab-American writers and poets now feel a sense of urgency and unrest particular to the malaise of our times. Smith states, “Like all immigrant groups, Arab-Americans have a sense of doubleness, feeling torn between their parents’ traditions and their new culture. In the black-and-white division of American racial politics, their added burden historically has been the perception of them as black or, at the very least, as occupying an indeterminate place in the country’s racial mix.”
Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye says, “There is a real sense among Arab-American writers of a need for balance, with 9/11 and the demonization of people in that part of the world…All the bad headlines are just very sad fragments of the true story. We feel a larger need than we did 20 years ago to create positive cultural stories, forces and linkages.”
One of the nascent trends in Arab-American literature is the emergence of the woman’s voice. Mohja Kahf, a Syrian-American, is distinguished for the contrast of her conservative headscarf and the erotic nature of her poetry (most notably the “sexually charged”—as Smith puts it, “More Than One Way to Break a Fast”, featured in the poetry selection above).
Suheir Hammad remembers growing up “around rhymes and break dance…those of us who weren’t Puerto Rican created our own minority group…I had all these languages available to me…Arabic, Black English, Spanish. I felt all this could inform my poetry.” Perhaps her strongest influence was her parents’ religious instruction of the Koran. She says, “For me creativity is a reflection of a higher power…having parents saying the way to live is through the music of this language.”
Journal Conclusion:
In diving into the Arab-American literary movement, and in particular woman’s poetry, I have seen a new world unfold before my eyes. As the wife of an Arab (Egyptian) Muslim, I feel a portion of the Arab-American spirit rubbing off on me—albeit vicariously. As these women deal with pressing political and socio-cultural issues, they tackle them with a dynamism and immediacy that brings a whole new dimension to activism. Their themes are at once timeless and timely, traditional and groundbreaking.
Many aspects of the Arab-American woman’s experience have impressed me, not the least of which is the subject of religion, specifically Islam, and the courage with which these women have remained faithful to traditional values without sacrificing their art or their edge. In a time when many would rather hide than be seen in a headscarf, even the poets who do not assume “Islamic Dress” or adhere to Islam are exerting an empowering and contagious pride in their culture and the validity of their traditions. In fact, I have been so inspired that I have begun experimenting with a little Arab-American poetry of my own:
My East
I hear you shuffling around, before dawn
as you lay down the rug and your life
piece by piece with each prostration.
So near to me at the foot of the bed
and yet as far as ancient cities choked in sand and stone
I hear those muffled words I half-understand
and marvel at God the polyglot.
I envy this devotion that pulls you from me
The dutiful back-and-forth of your days
That intimate calendar of five time zones
When you are far,
I lie face down and murmur in tongues
Hoping that my voice might reach you
like a call to prayer
and turn the needle of your compass towards me
By Alcira Molina-Ali (4/4/03)
Bibliography:
Abinader, Almaz
Children of Al-Mahjar: Arab American Literature Spans a Century
U.S. Society and Values, “Contemporary U.S. Literature: Multicultural Perspective”, Department of State, International Information Programs, February 2000
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0200/ijse/abinader.htm
Ameen F. Rihani Orgnization
http://www.ameenrihani.org
Hammad, Suheir
Exotic
Born Palestinian, Born Black (Harlem River Press, 1996).
The Poetry Center at
Smith College
http://www.smith.edu/poetrycenter/poems.php?poem_id=78&name=shammad
Hammad, Suheir
First Writing Since (published November 12, 2001)
Woman’s World Organization
http://www.wworld.org/archive/archive.asp?ID=60
Kahf, Mohja
More Than One Way to Break a Fast
Post-Gibran: An Anthology of New Arab-American Writing,
Eds. Munir Akash, Khaled Mattawa, Syracuse: Jusoor/ Syracuse University Press,
1999.
Kahf, Mohja
Copulation in English, Move Over, The Fires Have Begun
E-Mails from Scheherazad, University Press of Florida, 2003.
Pogrebin, Robin (NYT)
Movies, Performing
Arts/Weekend, Desk April
18, 2003, Friday
A
Rainbow of Poets Who Rhyme From Life
Shihab Nye, Naomi
Half-and-Half copyright @1998 Naomi Shihab Nye.
Reprinted from Fuel,
by Naomi Shihab Nye with the permission of BOA Editions,Ltd.
Smith, Dinitia (NYT)
The Arts Cultural
Desk, February
19, 2003, Wednesday
Arab-American
Writers, Uneasy in Two Worlds; Immigrant Authors Feel Added Burdens Since 9/11