Lisa Suhair Majaj (born 1960) is a Palestinian-American poet and scholar. She was born in Hawarden, Iowa; however, Majaj was raised in Jordan. She is widely known and has been published many times for her poetry and essays. has published poetry and creative nonfiction in World Literature Today, Visions International, South Atlantic Quarterly, The Women's Review of Books, The Atlanta Review, The Poetry of Arab Women, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East, Unrooted Childhoods and elsewhere.
More info on her works and accomlishments can be found in these two locations:
and
Why She Writes
According tio Majaj, "Poetry bears the longings of individuals, and of nations. Poetry gives us something to hold onto in the midst of despair. If it does no more than this, it is enough," Majaj says. "Much of my poetry has been inspired by the ongoing human tragedy of Palestine, and of Lebanon, from which I evacuated amid the 1982 Israeli invasion. My poetry also arises out of having a mixed identity, Arab and American; living my life in Jordan, Lebanon, the US and now Cyprus; and raising multicultural children." She often writes in a feminist perspective and style that fights to give Muslim women a voice. Many of her writings also adrress issues of war and peace and have inspired many.One of my favorite poems by her is called "Peace".
PEACE
Peace is two children walking toward each other from
different sides of a barricade. Behind them are the tin
shacks where they live with their parents in anger and
desperation and loss. At the barricade they solemnly
show each other what they have brought. One child has a
shovel, the other child a watering can. Each has a seed.
They dig the earth, plant the seeds, sprinkle water
carefully, then go home. Each day they meet again at the
barricade to see if the seeds have grown. When the first
tiny shoots emerge they slap hands gleefully through the
fence. When a bud emerges they laugh out loud. When a
flower breaks to light, petals silken as sunshine, they go
home humming a flower song, each in their own
language.
How She Impacted me
I chose this author because her works are the ones that spoke out most to me in my adventures through reading the many writings of Arab and Muslim women. She writes about having struggled with her identity and often finding herself torn between two worlds, and belonging to neither. I have had similar experiences. Growing up gay in a dominantly Hispanic household made it extremely hard to find who I was. I felt like I couldn't find acceptance any where i turned, home, school, etc. She also often speaks out against stereotypes and discrimination, which are two big things that i have dealt with and many people deal with in their lives. Some of her works also sing about peace and denounce war, and is something that i appreciate that she does. I also have a new respect for her cause and struggle having learned from a new perspective.
Her Works
Recognized Futures by Lisa Suhair Majaj
Turning to you, my name --
this necklace of gold, these letters
in script I cannot read
this part of myself I long
to recognize—falls forward
into my mouth.
You call my daily name, Lisa,
the name I've finally declared
my own, claiming a heritage
half mine: corn fields silver
in ripening haze, green music
of crickets, summer light sloping
to dusk on the Iowa farm.
This other name fills my mouth,
a taste faintly metallic,
blunt edges around which my tongue
moves tentatively: Suhair,
an old-fashioned name,
little star in the night. The second girl,
small light on a distanced horizon.
Throughout childhood this rending split:
continents moving slowly apart,
rift widening beneath taut limbs.
A contested name, a constant
longing, evening star rising mute
through the Palestine night.
Tongue cleft by impossible languages,
fragments of narrative fractured
to loss, homelands splintered
beyond bridgeless rivers,
oceans of salt.
From these fragments I feel
a stirring, almost imperceptible.
In the morning light these torn
lives merge: a name on your lips,
on mine, softly murmured,
mutely scripted, both real
and familiar, till I cannot
distinguish between your voice
and my silence, my words
and this wordless knowledge,
morning star rising
through lightening sky,
some music I can't quite
hear, a distant melody,
flute-like, nai through
the olives, a cardinal calling,
some possible language
all our tongues can sing.
|
Claims
I am not soft, hennaed hands,
a seduction of coral lips;
not the enticement of jasmine musk
through a tent flap at night;
not a swirl of sequined hips,
a glint of eyes unveiled.
I am neither harem's promise
nor desire's fulfillment.
I am not a shapeless peasant
trailing children like flies;
not a second wife, concubine,
kitchen drudge, house slave;
not foul-smelling, moth-eaten, primitive,
tent-dweller, grass-eater, rag-wearer.
I am neither a victim
nor an anachronism.
I am not a camel jockey, sand nigger, terrorist,
oil-rich, bloodthirsty, fiendish;
not a pawn of politicians,
nor a fanatic seeking violent heaven.
I am neither the mirror of your hatred and fear,
nor the reflection of your pity and scorn.
I have learned the world's histories,
and mine are among them.
My hands are open and empty:
the weapon you place in them is your own.
***
I am the woman remembering jasmine,
bougainvillea against chipped white stone.
I am the laboring farmwife
whose cracked hands claim this soil.
I am the writer whose blacked-out words
are birds' wings, razored and shorn.
I am the lost one who flees,
and the lost one returning;
I am the dream, and the stillness,
and the keen of mourning.
I am the wheat stalk, and I am
the olive. I am plowed fields young
with the music of crickets,
I am ancient earth struggling
to bear history's fruit.
I am the shift of soil
where green thrusts through,
and I am the furrow
embracing the seed again.
I am many rivulets watering
a tree, and I am the tree.
I am opposite banks of a river,
and I am the bridge.
I am light shimmering
off water at night,
and I am the dark sheen
that swallows the moon whole.
I am neither the end of the world
nor the beginning.
And a link to her essay Bounderies Arab/American
Here is a really interesting lecture she had...
"Poems and Comments on Arab American Literature" by Dr. Lisa Suhair Majaj.
References
and Where to Find Her Work
“Peace” by Lisa Suhair Majaj, first published in Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge: Vol. 7: Iss. 5, Article 17.
Majaj, L, "Recognized Futures", Food For Our Grandmothers, edited by Joanna Kadi, South End Press-Boston, MA, 1994.
Claims: Published in Food For Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists,
ed. Joanna Kadi (Boston: South End Press, 1994),
Guidelines can be found here: http://behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/2011/09/lisa-suheir-majajs-guidelines.htm
A journal entry can be found here: http://www.asjournal.org/52-2008/arab-american-literature-origins-and-developments/
http://imeu.org/article/lisa-suhair-majaj-poet-and-scholar
https://winningwriters.com/people/lisa-suhair-majaj
l
http://www1.umassd.edu/specialprograms/mideastaffairs/lisamaja.htm
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