12/08/23

I have two upcoming events:

• On Friday, I’ll be at the Mudgee Readers Festival

• Later this month I’ll be at Mosman Art Gallery reading poetry in support of my brother Khaled Sabsabi, whose work is being exhibited there.

Let me also take this moment to shout out some events my writer pals are doing this month:

• Aug 16th, Peter Polites is launching his third novel, God Forgets the Poor

• Aug 17th, Amal Awad is launching her eight book, Bitter & Sweet

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I came across an article in ArtsHub the other day celebrating the “wave” of MENA women authors in Australia gaining mainstream literary recognition, which is great, except that according to the article, this wave constitutes two writers, in Yumna Kassab and Sara Saleh. Yumna has published three novels, the last of which (The Lovers) was shortlisted for this year’s Miles Franklin, a major achievement; Sara has two books which are forthcoming later this year.

Whenever anyone new from a marginalised community gains recognition in a rarefied field, there is generally an attempt to pretend that the new is the only; an erasure of the history of the field. Partly this is just lazy marketing, in an industry that has malformed itself to heavily favour the debut, the buzzed about newcomer, in the most superficial way possible. I’m on my fourth book now; I’ve felt firsthand the slippage of attention, and by the same token, also benefited from that outsized focus in the early stages. It comes from a refusal to engage with books on their own terms—few can afford to give books that kind of time, fewer outlets are providing the space to publish that work etc—and to focus entirely on the author, to make their biography the subject, simply because it’s easier.

Personally, in these circumstances I always try to mention the writers who came before, and those who are emerging. I want to note before going any further that we deserve, as writers, to have our work spotlighted on its own, to not be awkwardly shoehorned into “any similar ethnic will do” articles (like when my poetry collection The Lost Arabs was reviewed in the SRB alongside an anthology of essays, as if the two books didn’t merit their own space). The trouble comes when there is a premise presented, as there was in this case, of an explicit grouping focused on the authors.

Wonderfully, there actually is a wave of MENA women writers in Australia, and I wish they’d all been mentioned, from the present to the historic, in order for the full picture to be appreciated. Take, for example, Shadia’s Promise by Christelle Haddad, published in 1998, 25 years ago, or the superb satirical novel Seducing Mr Maclean by Loubna Haikal, which was published in 2002. Take the four novels published by award-winning author Nada Awar Jarrar, beginning with Somewhere, Home in 2002.

Then there’s Randa Abdel-Fatteh, who has blazed a path for the whole community, in both academia and fiction, over the past two decades. Above, I mentioned that Palestinian-Australian writer Amal Awad has her 8th book (and fourth novel) coming out next week; there’s also Sarah Ayoub, journalist and popular author of several YA novels and picture books; Rawah Arjah, author of The F Team; the poetry of Elif Sezen, as well as Huda and Me by H. Hayek.

In literary non-fiction, there’s the huge success of The Mother Wound by award-winning author and artist, Amani Haydar; there’s Sara El-Sayed’s fantastic Muddy People; Root & Branch by Eda Gunaydin; the phenomenal White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad and How to Lose Friends and Influence White People by Antoinette Lattouf. We’ve just had Lamisse Hamouda’s important book The Shape of Dust published and next month, we’ll see the memoir Tell Her She’s Dreamin’ by Simone Amelia Jordan hit shelves too.

That’s 16 additional living authors that could have been mentioned, several of whom fit the framework of “rising recognition” or “literary / mainstream success”, and that’s off the top of my head. There could very well be more (if I missed anyone, do let me know!) Some of these people I don’t know personally, some I don’t even care for, but every one of them deserve to have their work taken seriously by anyone in this industry who is writing about the publications of MENA women in Australia. Once again, I have to say that editors in this country aren’t doing enough, and we are all the poorer for it.

That’s my two cents anyway. Yullah, go read their books.

Salaam,
Omar