Lebanon to Detroit and the Places In-Between

• Main Author: O'Neill, Shannon
• Format: Others
• Published: VCU Scholars Compass 2013
• Subjects: Fiction; Arab American; Detroit; Multiethnic Literature; Arts and Humanities; Creative Writing
• Online Access: http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/507; http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1506&context=etd

I am from Dearborn, Michigan, home to one of the largest populations of Arab immigrants in the United States. This mixing of cultures, of peoples, of identities has informed my writing in many ways. Narrative themes of immigration, exile and isolation inspire my writing and my thesis represents chapters from my first novel, tracing the Arab American immigration experience from 1914 until 1967; and, my second novel, set in Detroit, continues this narrative through the perspectives of two characters, drawing on the post 9-11 Arab American community and experience. The poet Hayan Charara has spoken of “the absence of a ‘personal history’ of the Middle East. . . for those whose families were among the first waves of Arabs to immigrate to the United States.” As an Arab American writer, my fiction attempts to create threads of memory, of family, of stories, that connect us back to a similar space.