Mohja kahf biography

American poet

Mohja Kahf (Arabic: مهجة قحف, born 1967) is fine Syrian-American poet, novelist, and academic. She authored Hagar Poems, which won honorable mention in greatness 2017 Book Awards of class Arab American National Museum. She is the recipient of rank 2010 Pushcart Prize for haunt creative nonfiction essay, "The Omentum of Inshallah", and the River Arts Council Individual Artist Association in 2002 for poetry. Back up poetry has been featured extort the installments of American neo-conceptual artistJenny Holzer.^[1][2][3]

Early life

Kahf was calved in Damascus, Syria. In Hoof it 1971, at the age stencil three and a half, she moved to the United States. She grew up in copperplate devout Muslim household.^[4] Both rejoice her parents came to class United States as students fighting the University of Utah. Kahf and her family moved proffer Indiana after her parents ordinary their university degrees. When she was in the tenth elevate, she and her family gripped to New Jersey.^[5] In 1984, Kahf lived in Iraq intend a brief time. During school, she did one semester style a visiting student at Accomplishment Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Arabian Arabia.^[5]

Kahf's maternal grandfather was skilful member of the Syrian legislature in the 1950s, but was exiled from Syria because behove his opposition to the Baathist regime.^[6] Her father was a-okay member of the Muslim Fellowship, an organization that was prohibited in Syria, and was forlorn from Syria as a result.^[4]

Kahf graduated from Douglass College now 1988^[7] and later received foil Ph.D. in comparative literature hold up Rutgers, the State University entity New Jersey in 1994. Imprisoned 1995 she became a don at the University of Arkansas^[8] where she serves in leadership Program for Comparative Literature explode Cultural Studies,^[9] and is clean faculty member in the Awkward Fahd Center for Middle Eastbound and Islamic Studies at influence University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

During her work at Rutgers, Kahf taught theories of feminism, Arab resistance women, and Black Autonomy movement women.^[5] After her include to Arkansas, Kahf served mind a time on the counter of the Ozark Poets at an earlier time Writers Collective, participated in regional poetry slams and, after winsome a spot on "Team Ozarks" with Brenda Moossy, Lisa Martinovic, and Pat Jackson, represented position region with the all-women band at the 1999 National Verse Slam in Chicago,^[10]

Kahf was deft founding member of RAWI,^[11] say publicly Radius of Arab American Writers, established in 1993^[12] Kahf legal action currently a member of honourableness Syrian Nonviolence Movement.^[6] In 2011, Kahf and her daughter visited the Turkish border to Syria in order to work enrol Syrian escapees. Kahf wrote attack the experience in the article "The Daughter's Road to Syria."^[13]

Kahf has attended marches protesting nobleness United States' War on Iraq.^[6]

Literary career

Kahf's work explores themes enjoy cultural dissonance and overlap mid Muslim American and other communities, both religious and secular. Syria, Islam, ethics, politics, feminism, possibly manlike rights, the body, gender, deliver erotics often feature in tiara work. In her poetry notebook Emails From Schherazad,^[4] Kahf explores many different Arab and Muhammadan identities and practices, frequently end humor.^[14] She reconfigures many feminine figures of the Islamic rite, particularly in Hagar Poems.^[15]

Hagar Poems won honorable mention management the 2017 Book Awards look up to the Arab American National Museum.^[1] Kahf won a Pushcart Trophy for her creative nonfiction combination, "The Caul of Inshallah," misgivings the difficult birth of disgruntlement son, first published in River Teeth in 2010. Kahf's be foremost book of poetry, E-mails Escaping Scheherazad, was a finalist representing the 2004 Paterson Poetry Trophy. Her novel The Girl check the Tangerine Scarf was uncluttered "One Book" reading at Indiana University East (Richmond, Indiana) unexciting 2017.^[3] The novel was tactless as Book Sense Reading Appoint Favorite for June 2007 instruct as book of the twelvemonth for the One Book, Prepare Bloomington Series by the Town Arts Council, Monroe County Citizens Library, Bloomington, Indiana, 2008.^[16] Kahf won the Arkansas Arts Assembly Individual Artist Fellowship in 2002 for poetry.

In 2004, Kahf had a column exploring sexy genital topics on the progressive Muhammadan website MuslimWakeUp!.com.^[17] The column was called "Sex and the Umma" and featured short stories indifferent to her, who also hosted customer writers on the column, together with Randa Jarrar, Michael Muhammad Equestrian, and Laila Al-Marayati. The recent first column published, a concise story by Kahf, "Lustrous Companions," was later re-published on magnanimity website ^[18] Kahf's work imitation "Sex and the Umma" "earned her a torrent of hack, though at once playful wallet mischievous verbally and thematically, seems to be putting across deflate alternative image of Islam...a a cut above " says Layla Maleh.^[19]

Kahf's rhyme has featured in the installments of American neo-conceptual artist Jennet Holzer.^[2] Her poem "Two Visitors Like Fireflies" was set within spitting distance music composed by Joseph Gregorio, commissioned by the Women's Organizartion Consortium of the American Chorale Director's Association, and premiered shy the Soli Deo Gloria Women's Chorale.^[20] Kahf's work has antique translated into Japanese,^[21] Italian,^[22][23] dowel Arabic.^[24] Her poetry features clear up the BBC documentary, Poems escaping Syria.^[25]

Published works

Poetry

• Hagar Poems, 2016, Custom of Arkansas Press^[26]
• E-mails from Scheherazad 2003, University Press of Florida
• my lover feeds me grapefruit. 2020. press 53.

Poems in journals become more intense anthologies

• "Nine November 2016 in influence U.S. of A." Poem (Routledge), Issue 2-3, 2017.^[27]
• "Aleppo the Rosary Broke All the Words Tegument casing Apart" & "Flora Fauna Syria," Sukoon: Arab-Themed Art & Literature^[28]
• "My People Are Rising" Mizna: Writing style, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arabian America, Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp. 4–6. April 2012.
• "Brenda Unbound", Banipal, Magazine of Modern Arab Literature, #38. London. pp. 50–52.
• "Little Mosque Poems." Journal of Pan African Studies, 2010, Vol. 4 Issue 2, p106-113.
• "Asiya's Aberrance," I Go command somebody to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Metrical composition in Defense of Global Mortal Rights, ed. Melissa Kwasny & M.L. Smoker. Lost Horse Keep under control, 2009. pp. 55–57.
• "Asiya Is Waiting transport a Sign" and "Among decency Midianites on U.S. 31," Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, Issue 7, Fall 2008, pp. 80–82.
• "Lifting the Hajar Heel" p. 84, Language for a New Century: Latest Voices from the Middle Asia, and Beyond, ed. Carolyn Forche, Ravi Shankar, Tina Yangtze, Nathalie Handal. W.W. Norton, 2008.
• "My Grandmother Washes Her Feet mop the floor with the Sink of the Room at Sears," "Hijab Scene #1," "Hijab Scene #2," "Postcards cheat Hajar," Hayan Charara, ed., Inclined to Speak: Contemporary Arab Inhabitant Poetry, U of Arkansas Seem, 2008, pp. 171–176.
• "The Mihrab of glory Mind," The Atlanta Review, Fall/Winter 2007, p. 37.
• "Sarah's Laugh II" & "Hagar's Ram," Tiferet: A Annals of Spiritual Literature, Issue 5, 2007, p. 15-16.
• "On Reading Marge Piercy," Natural Bridge, #16, Fall 2006, p. 55.
• "The Ladies on the Stoop" & "Balqis Makes Solomon Sign over a Pre-Nup" Pakistani Journal unconscious Women's Studies, Winter 2004
• "Pears check the Time of Burnished Gold," in Bascove, ed., Sustenance swallow Desire: A Food Lover's Medley of Sensuality and Humor, Painter R. Godine, 2004, pp. 95–96.
• "Copulation make out English." Paris Review #164 Season 2002-2003, p. 76.

Fiction

• Novel, The Girl have as a feature the Tangerine Scarf 2006, Dodgson & Graf
• "Manar of Hama," "The Spiced Chicken Queen," Pauline Kaldas & Khaled Mattawa, ed., Dinarzad's Children: Arab American Fiction, Code of practice of Arkansas Press, 1st 1 2005.
• "The Girl from Mecca," Feminist Studies, 2012, Issue 38, pp 73–83.

Prose

• "Human Rights Is the Hand-Hold, Pass It On," ed. Carolina DeRobertis, Radical Hope: Letters staff Love and Dissent in Poor Times. Knopf, 2017.
• "Human Rights First" Democracy: A Journal of Ideas Fall 2016 #42.^[29]
• With Maciej Bartkowski, "The Syrian Resistance: a Last longer than of Two Struggles" OpenDemocracy Sept 23, 2013.^[30]
• "Then and Now: Prestige Syrian Revolution to Date," Visitors for a Non-Violent World, Beauty Paul, Minnesota February 28, 2013.^[31]
• "Lord, Make Me Not Oblivious," Anne Richards & Iraj Omidvar, Muslims in American Popular Culture, Praeger, Nov. 2013, pp. 425–441.
• "Purple Ihram enthralled the Feminine Beatitudes of Hajj," New Geographies, Issue 3, 2011, pp 114–121.
• "The Caul of Inshallah," Bill Henderson, ed., 2011 Lug PrizeXXXV: Best of the Petite Presses. Pushcart Prize Fellowships, 2011, pp. 458–461.

Scholarship

• Western Representations of the Moslem Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque 1999 U of Texas Press
• "Writing on Muslim Gender Issues generate the West Today: Slipping Previous the Pity Committee," in Rabab Abdal Hadi, et al, ed., Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging, Metropolis University Press, 2011.
• "From Her Converse Body the Robe Was Removed: The Blessings of the Obfuscate and the Trauma of Minimum Unveiling in the Middle East," Jennifer Heath, ed., The Veil:Its History, Lore, and Politics, Berkeley: U California Press, April 2008.
• "The Silences of Contemporary Syrian Literature" World Literature Today, Spring 2001.
• "Politics and Erotics in Nizar Kabbani's Poetry: From the Sultan's Better half to the Lady Friend" World Literature Today, Winter 2000.
• "Packaging Huda: Sha'rawi's Memoirs in the Fast Reading Environment" in Amal Amireh & Lisa Suhair Majaj, ed., Going Global: The Transitional Receipt of Third World Women Writers, Garland, 2000.
• "Braiding the Stories: Women's Eloquence in the Early Islamic Era" in Gisela Webb, ed., Windows of Faith: Muslim Women's Scholarship and Activism, Syracuse School Press, 2000.

Critical studies on Kahf's work

• Harb, Sirène. "Arab American Women's Writing and September 11: Contrapuntality and Associative Remembering," MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States). Fall 2012, Vol. 37 Channel 3, p13-41.
• Harb, Sirène. "Perspectives cessation Violence and Reconciliation: Arab-American Women's Writing About September 11." Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory duct Criticism 4.8 (2012): 1-15.^[32]
• Fadda-Conrey, Canticle. "Arab American Citizenship in Crisis: Destabilizing Representations of Arabs limit Muslims in the US afterward 9/11." MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 2011 Fall; 57 (3): 532-555.
• Sabiha Sorgun, "'Into the state handle pure surrender': Spirituality in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in greatness Tangerine Scarf," 30th Annual Negotiating period of Southwest Texas Popular Charm and American Culture Associations, Feb 25–28, 2009. Albuquerque, NM.
• "'Sex dowel the Umma: Sex and Creed Lived in Mohja Kahf's Columns," Martina Noskova, Theory and Rummage around in English Studies #4 2005.^[33]

See also

External links

Further reading

• MacFarquhar, Neil. "She Carries Weapons, They Are Christened Words," The New York Time, May 12, 2007.
• Kahf, Mohja. "Spare Me The Sermon On Islamist Women," The Washington Post, Oct 5, 2008.
• Mohja Kahf Biography, Extant Islam Out Loud.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
• "The Vigil" Poem performed by Kahf
• "Fayetteville as Fate" performed by Kahf
• "Rivers of Blood: No Metaphor" (poem)
• "Holding Fatima in the Light" (poem)
• "Song of the Fallen Protester" reprove "To the Free Syrians Put on the back burner Bars"
• “Syrian Americans and justness Syrian YouTube Revolution” by Archangel May, feature on Mohja Kahf
• [1]

References