Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Literary Solidarities and the Politics of Language

by Michelle Hartman

Overview

In Breaking Broken English, Hartman explores the historical and current manifestations of this relationship through language and literature, with a specific focus on Arab American literary works that use the English language creatively to put into practice many of the theories and ideas advanced by Black American thinkers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815636205
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Series:	Critical Arab American Studies
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Michelle Hartman is professor of Arabic literature and director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University as well as a research associate at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including Native Tongue, Stranger Talk: The Arabic and French Literary Landscapes of Lebanon.

Interviews

One of few books that connects Black American and Arab American activism.

Editorial Reviews

Hartman deftly analyzes Arab American work with Black Studies as a critical lens, offering radical reading strategies that fundamentally shift how we understand Arab American letters. Breaking Broken English should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the field.

author of New Body Politics: Narrating Arab an Therí Pickens

Michelle Hartman plumbs the polysemy of 'breaking' with rich analytical acuity, compelling us to read solidarity across a wide range of literary and linguistic practices.

Keith Feldman

Hartman deftly analyzes Arab American work with Black Studies as a critical lens, offering radical reading strategies that fundamentally shift how we understand Arab American letters. Breaking Broken English should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the field.

author of New Body Politics: Narrating Arab an Therí Pickens

Michele Hartman's Breaking Broken English... interrogates how Arab American literature is informed and shaped by Black literary production, with an emphasis on linguistic and aesthetic similarities.

Commonwealth Essays and Studies

Hartman's thought-provoking analysis of a variety of work from poetry to short fiction to novels to memoir offer an understanding of how language and racial politics have impacted the way Arab American position themselves in American society.

Hollins University Pauline Kaldas

Hartman deftly analyzes Arab American work with Black Studies as a critical lens, offering radical reading strategies that fundamentally shift how we understand Arab American letters. Breaking Broken English should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the field.-- "Therí Pickens, author of New Body Politics: Narrating Arab and Black Identity in the Contemporary United States"

Hartman's thought-provoking analysis of a variety of work from poetry to short fiction to novels to memoir offer an understanding of how language and racial politics have impacted the way Arab American position themselves in American society.-- "Pauline Kaldas, Hollins University"

Michele Hartman's Breaking Broken English... interrogates how Arab American literature is informed and shaped by Black literary production, with an emphasis on linguistic and aesthetic similarities.-- "Commonwealth Essays and Studies"

Michelle Hartman plumbs the polysemy of 'breaking' with rich analytical acuity, compelling us to read solidarity across a wide range of literary and linguistic practices.-- "Keith Feldman, University of California, Berkeley"

From the Publisher