April 15, 2005

Interviewer: Sumana Harihareswara
Interviewee: author Diana Abu-Jaber

SH: You've been on book tour recently.  I see you're sort of spacing it
out.  You're not just going, "it's Tuesday, this must be Denver."  How
is your book tour going?

DAJ: It's a great book tour.  It's one of those sort of funny things.
You feel so excited when you get a lot of wonderful attention.  And
then, when you're actually doing it, you're kind of tired and cranky and
you have to find ways to take little naps and things like that.  I'm
actually feeling very grateful that they've given me little breaks.
They've given me some time in Miami.  I'm home for a couple days before
I go back out, so it's great.

SH: And you probably get to spend some time at your home in Portland as
well.

DAJ: No, actually.  We have kind of our home base here in Florida. When
we go back to Portland, we usually end up either staying with friends or
subletting.  That's been an open piece of the arrangement.  We want to
buy a second home in Portland, but we just got our tax bill (laughs).
So that's not going to happen this year.

SH: I see that your Portland arrangement is part of your "permanent
Bedouinism" that you reference in the book.

DAJ: Yes, definitely.  I'm the family Bedouin for sure.  My parents were
very, very nomadic, and I think that I've taught at something like five
to six different schools now.  I kind of have this insatiable curiosity
about other places, so I love moving.

SH:  And it's not just the love of travel; it's a love of living
someplace else.

DAJ:  Exactly.  Meeting new people.  Seeing what's going on and new
environments.  Going to Miami was so exciting because it was just unlike
any other place I'd ever lived before.  I'm still kind of in a swoon
about it.  We've been here for about two years now and it still feels so
sparkly and interesting to me.

SH: You were in DC and New York and Westchester.  That's around where
you grew up?

DAJ: That's a little bit downstate.  I grew up in Syracuse, NY.  So
that's the central New York region.  I actually did an event earlier, in
March, up in Syracuse, and had old home week and all my old friends came
out, and my sister and her family.  It was great.  I got to see
everybody again.

SH:  Did everybody cook?

DAJ: Well, they did bring out baklava.  So that was great and totally
unexpected.

SH:  Was it in honor of your book?

DAJ: Yes!  [laughs]  I loved that.  Everybody comments on the recipes.
That's always a really big thing.  And I love hearing back from so many
people that they're actually trying the recipes. And people are already
picking their favorites and I've been getting all kinds of questions.
"When do you use clarified butter?" "How do you chop the nuts?"  It's so
interesting for someone like myself, who usually tends more toward
literary writing, to be able to dabble in the food element a little as
well.

SH: I noticed that your recipes are relatively straightforward.


DAJ: Yes.

SH: You don't, for example, say, "the ribbon of butter should be as
glossy as a newborn's hair," or something like that.

DAJ: Ooh, well-put. [laughs]  I basically was working with my father for
the majority of these recipes.  And with Dad, you really want to keep
things as simple as you can.  He would say things like, "you put a
handful of butter in the mix."  And then you have to talk out, "what
does this mean, a handful?  How big is a handful?"  Or, with the grape
leaves, you know, there's a recipe for stuffed grape leaves.  I asked
him, "do you use the large grape leaves, or the small ones?"  And Dad
said, "Well, you use a lady's hand size."  And then we have this whole
conversation about how big was the lady.

SH: Is this a very delicate lady?

DAJ: You can do this endlessly with my father.  Like so many cooks, it's
all very approximate, very improvisational.  So the idea of a clearly
scientifically measured recipe is really unfamiliar to him.

SH: This is not America's Test Kitchen.

DAJ: That's right.  Martha Stewart he ain't.

SH: You mentioned that the people in Syracuse made you baklava.  And, in
a previous interview [Pages, March/April 2005], I believe I saw you
mentioning that the baklava in
your book is meant to make up for ten thousand bad baklavas.

DAJ: Oh, it's true!  Yeah.  I see my project as a kind of cultural food
rehabilitation.

SH: Like these awful dolmas that one sees everywhere.

DAJ: Yeah.  Exactly.  With the wonderful advent of multiculturalism and
the popularization of other cuisines, and foods and arts, you also have,
I'm sorry to say, a bastardization of their foods as well.  When I was
growing up in Syracuse, you didn't have tubs of hummus in the
supermarket that were mixed with sun-dried tomatoes and roasted parsley.

So while I'm really, really happy to see that the food is out there and
people know about it, there's this danger.  There's a lot of bad stuff
out there, and I think especially the stuffed grape leaves -- the dolmas
-- and the baklava are very susceptible to being horribly interpreted.
And then people think they don't like it.  So if people would just
follow my recipes, they will be very, very happy, I think.

SH: It's like you're a baklava fundamentalist.

DAJ: Yes!  It's the baklava jihad!  [laughs]  Ooh.

SH: You're being very hip and edgy and Arab there.

DAJ: Right.  Exactly.  It's tongue-in-cheek, but you know, there's
something very satisfying for me when people come up to me and say,
"Wow.  I just tried this recipe, and I DO like baklava!"  I'm like, "All
right.  We got a breakthrough."

SH: I believe my boyfriend said he didn't like baklava.  And he alwasy
felt that it was too saccharine sweet, and also a little too hard.  And
so then he went and made a baklava-sort-of-thing with puff pastry and
dates and honey and nuts and fudge.

DAJ: Ooooh!

SH: There's reinterpretation that bastardizes things, like
jalapeno-cheddar bagels, but then there's adding carrots to things.
Some are simple modifications.  Is there a really wonderful
reinterpretation of baklava, that's completely out of left field, that
you've enjoyed?  Or any Arab dish, for that matter.

DAJ: Actually, I think the one really wonderful reinterpretation I had
was a baklava where they ground very fine, very excellent pieces of
chocolate into the walnuts, the internal nut layer.  And that was
exquisite.  The whole thing was interpreted very beautifully.  This was
at a very chic restaurant, and this was one of their specialties.  I
would say, "Don't try this at home."  It's very dangerous.  Where I have
the most successful SUBSTANTIAL reinterpretations of Arabic food, in my
experience they have actually come from the Arab world.  When I've
traveled to really upscale, nice restaurants in the Arab world -- the
so-called Arab world -- I've enjoyed really wwonderful kinds of fusions
that they've done with traditional ingredients and traditional dishes
and completely reinterpreted things like smoked frica, which is a
cracked wheat.  Which I've had reinterpreted with different kinds of
meat and dried fruits.  Reinterpretations of North African dishes that
have been mingled with French cuisine.  So I know it can be done.  I
think maybe it takes a deep understanding of the cuisine before you
start reinterpreting it.  That's really key.

SH: And of the history of the land.  I mean, making North African/French
dishes seems pretty true to the history of the place.

DAJ: Exactly.  You just take the best of what the colonizer has brought
and mix it in to the traditional foods.

SH: You mention the "so-called Arab world."  What are the borders of the
so-called Arab world?

DAJ: It's a little hard to define.  Generally, people consider the Arab
world to be all and any of the countries that speak Arabic.  And so Iran
is not, sort of, an Arab country.

SH: They're Persian.

DAJ: Right.  Turkey is not at all Arab.  But people tend to sort of lump
all these countries in together.

SH: Because of Islam?

DAJ: Yeah, I think so.  Or just a vague sense that it's all "over
there."  Or, "y'all look that way."  Suddenly, Indians become Arab.
There's no stopping it.  And in fact it's really kind of perplexing,
because even within the so-called Arab world, there are so many regional
differences.  Even, speaking of Arabic, it's really hard to say that
someone from Algeria is of the same cultural entity as someone from
Lebanon or Jordan.  So I like to try to be as specific when I talk about
my cultural experience as I can.  But I know that that's asking a lot
from people who are uninitiated.

SH: You make it very clear in the book that there's parts of your
experience that feel Arab to you, and parts that are very specific to
Jordan, and to being Jordanian-American.

DAJ: Yes.

SH: In <i>Crescent</i> you wrote about Iraqi Americans.

DAJ: Yeah.  You know, I like to really push the envelope of my own sort
of canvas. A very big mixed metaphor there. [laughs]  Well, you know
what I'm getting at there.  I like to paint as large of a canvas as I
can.  And so I'm always kind of pushing myself and trying to test my own
limits.  When I was thinking about <i>Crescent</i>, I was teaching at
UCLA.  I was teaching a class on Arab literature and culture.  And I had
a lot of students who were from Iraq.  And they threw these great
parties, and they were really, really fun people.  I just thought,
"okay, let me educate myself a little bit here."

And I was also really, really tired of the Hollywood interpretations of
the Persian Gulf War. The first Persian Gulf War.  And I wanted to ask
whether we could enlarge the conversation a little bit and look at what
the Iraqi experience in the first Persian Gulf War had been, and maybe
ask ourselves what was going on.  So I started looking at it and I just
felt infused with this desire to bring forth the richness and depth of
tradition and culture that comes out of a place like Baghdad that we
don't get to see in the American media.  It's just all about politics
and violence and terrorism.  So it became a real labor of love for me,
almost evangelical.

And I do have family who have traveled through and have lived in Iraq. 
So it felt like a natural extension of my family's experience.  I
started interviewing people.  I started doing a lot of research and
cooking with other Iraqi chefs.  And it all gradually came together into
<i>Crescent</i>.

SH: Is there a specific Iraqi dish that you fell in love with?

DAJ: Mmmm.  Well, I felt so many similarities between the two.  There
was one that was - gosh - it was a stewed chicken dish.  I can't
remember the name of it now!  It was this beautiful stewed chicken dish
that you cook and cook and cook until the chicken just falls apart.  And
when I had it, it was served with the smoked cracked wheat.  Lovely,
lovely cooking.  And, in general, I found a lot of similarities between
the Iraqi and the Jordanian dishes.  Different ingredients, different
preparations, definitely.

SH: Same spices, mostly.

DAJ: Yeah, a lot of similarities.

SH: I see that in your newest book, in <i>The Language of Baklava</i>,
there's an episode toward the beginning, when you're very young, when
you come face to face with the fact that the stuffed squashes that have
lamb in them are made out of this lamb, that you had actually met and
played with.  And then, later in the book, your [vegetarian] friend
Phinneas or "Fattoush" has a rather unpleasant experience around lamb.

DAJ: [laughs] Yep.

SH: Why do you choose to eat meat?

DAJ: Well, you know, I think that in my heart I'm a vegetarian.  In my
soul, I'm a vegetarian.  But, in reality, ohhh, I'm incredibly weak!
And I just love, love, LOVE shish kebabs and roasted chicken, and ohh,
I'm just so susceptible.  So I'm kind of constantly going back and forth
between what would I would rather do, and what I feel is right, and what
I end up doing, which is munching my way through roasted lamb with
garlic.

But it is true that, when I wrote about meat, and these meat dishes, I
think it's part of the mystique of a very specific part of Arab cuisine,
which is the stuffed vegetable.  My uncle has said this many times: "The
Arabs will stuff anything." And whenever you have a stuffed vegetable,
stuffed squash, stuffed grape leaves, you know, whatever it might be,
there's always a mystery.  There's a hidden ingredient.  And you have to
trust the cook whenever you go ahead and eat a stuffed anything.  And
usually it's going to be a great experience.  But it means that - in
some way it's a metaphor for giving yourself over to a cultural or
family experience.  In the first story, me eating the stuffed grape
leaves, it meant that I just trusted my family.  In the later story,
when Fattoush eats the stuffed grape leaves, he trusts his friends.  He
trusts this culture.  And it doesn't always work out that well.
[Laughs] Yeah.  It is a metaphor.

SH: You live sometimes in Miami and sometimes in Portland [Oregon].  Do
you consider Miami to be part of the South?

DAJ: Well, what I'm told is that Florida is one of the only states in
which you have to go north to get to the South.  That has been my
experience.  Miami and South Florida is almost a kind of world unto
itself. It's very cosmopolitan.  And it feels very Northern to me.
Northern and Cuban, of course.  So it has this interesting mixture of
all sorts of expat New Yorkers, New Jerseians, Canadians, and then
Cubans and other Latin Americans who have all moved into the
neighborhood and have created this very interesting cosmopolitan mix.  I
like it because, in my neighborhood, every single one of my neighbors is
from a different country. And so I feel kind of at home in this weird
mix.  We are a new country that we create by virtue of all being from
other places, and I love that.  People hear my last name and they don't
even blink.  It's just like, "Okay.  We understand this.  We know what
this is.  And we accept this."

SH: Is it a very hospitable place?

DAJ: I would say it is.  The Latin culture is incredibly generous.  My
neighbor, Gino, right next door to us, has these huge festivities and
celebrations over in his back yard.  He'll roast a whole lamb on a spit
and all the neighbors will come over and they play dominoes together.
They'll be laughing and drinking and smoking cigars all night long.  We
go over and visit.  It's very, very open. We're friends with so many
people in our neighborhood, and that feels kind of special to me. I
really appreciate that, that openness of spirit.

SH: Do you feel that in Portland also?

DAJ: Yes, but in a different way.  Portland has a different kind of
character.  I notice that when I first moved to Portland, which was -
gosh - about eight years ago, one of the first things people would ask
me would be, "What high school did you go to?"  It's one of these kinds
of places where people really settle in, and there are deep pioneer
roots.  There's the sort of pride of place that exists in Portland.
When you get there, it's so much work to get to Portland!  If you're a
pioneer, you have to go over mountains, and ford rivers, and go across
the desert of Oregon.

SH: The cultural desert?

DAJ: Well, eugh!  Some might say so!  There's definitely a big old
desert portion of the state that's called high desert.  You have to
travel for a long, long ways before you get to the city.  And it's kind
of this enchanted little place nestled up in the mountains.  And so
people get there and they don't leave. [laughs]  And so you get a
different kind of spirit there.

SH: Or in Miami you could just hop on a boat and leave if you really
wanted to.  And you could go somewhere else where it's equally warm and
humid.

DAJ: That's right.  Well, I think people come to Miami, and Florida in
general, because they are just -- they're fleeing from something.  So
you get this fascinating kind of compilation of people who haven't fit
in, for one reason or another, in other parts of the United States and
they all end up out here, and we're all kind of crazy, and all kind of
wacky.

SH: Is Portland more homogenous?

DAJ: I would say so.  In terms of ethnicity and culture, definitely.
You know, when I lived in Portland, I think I was one of the five Arabs
who lived in the state.  We all knew each other.  [laughs]  Obviously,
I'm exaggerating, but it really is pretty homogenous, and so on the one
hand, you feel almost like a celebrity, if you go there and you look
different.  But on the other hand, sometimes you feel like a fish out of
water.

SH: Do you tend to write your fiction better in Portland or in Miami?

DAJ: Oooh.  You know, I have to confess that Portland is such a great
writing town.  It's made for writing.  It's almost a theory that I have
about -- if you have a city where there's a warm, beautiful, nurturing
weather and environment, you don't want to be inside working and
writing.  And so a city like Portland has really cultivated its indoor
life.  And there are all sorts of wonderful coffeehouses and restaurants
and all sorts of beautiful venues for writers and bookstores.  You have
these days of unending rain and it's often very chilly.  So you don't
feel bad at all about locking yourself to your desk and just settling
in and getting a lot of work done.  Whereas in Miami, you kind of feel
like you ought to be out at the beach lifting weights or something.
Getting plastic surgery.

SH: Or barbecuing outside in your backyard.

DAJ: Exactly.  I do a lot more cooking here, which is wonderful and bad 
too, you know, because it means less writing.

SH: And then, when you spent your year in Jordan, you evidently didn't
get much writing done at all.

DAJ: Oooh!  That was tough.  It's such a culturally gregarious and
hospitable place that it's really hard.  Especially when you're a
newcomer.  Everybody wants you to come over, go to parties, go out to
eat, and they're really into visiting.  Americans, we've really adapted
to email.  So it's like, one of my closest friends lives just a few
blocks away from me here, and we just email each other.  We hardly ever
hear each other's voice.  You email each other several times a day.  In
a state -- we're all tapped into our work, we're all busy, we're all
sort of in our separate spheres.  In Jordan, it's all about visiting and
eating and dinner parties, and not so much about working.  So I'm glad I
experienced it and I'm glad I can kind of move in and out between the
two.

SH: So you've experienced Jordan and different parts of the US for,
basically, all of your life.  Do you feel that there's been a decline in
hospitality in the US?

DAJ: It's interesting.  People have told me that.  I was recently
talking to a book-club group, and they got very curious about my dinner
parties, because I was talking about them and they said, "How often do
you throw dinner parties?"  And I said, "well, we try at least, say,
every other week, and at LEAST once a month."  And I saw them kind of
looking at each other, and then I started asking, "what's the last time
you had a dinner party?"  And a number of people there hadn't had a
party of any kind for years!  Literally.

And I only have my own experience to go on.  I grew up in a house where
we enterained literally weekend.  Every weekend family, extended family,
friends, the Arab and the American communities and our neighbors would
come over.  To me, this was normal.

I think it may be -- what's that book?  Is it called <i>Bowling
Alone</i>?

SH: Yes.  You're referencing <i>Bowling Alone</i> by Robert Putnam.

DAJ: Yes.  I think his thesis is very similar to this, that with the
decline of certain kinds oforganized social groups, like bowling
leagues, we lose that ability to socialize and to congregate in a
regular way.  I'm hopeful that things like book groups and book clubs
are stepping forward to fill in some of the gap.  Because I don't
remember there being so many book clubs in the past.  I hope that's just
shifted.  It may not be that we're becoming less social but perhaps
we're expressing it in different ways.  Because I need to have a really
social life.  I probably have a really bad personality for a writer
because I'm much too sociable.  I would much rather be out talking with
my friends and fooling around and having lunch than writing, ever.

SH: A couple of years ago, when you spoke at Cody's Books in Berkeley
promoting <i>Crescent</i>, someone asked you about your work ethic.  And
I believe you said, "I don't really have any kind of a work ethic.  I
should probably get one."

DAJ: That's right! Oh, Sumana, that's you! [Abu-Jaber laughs, realizing
that Harihareswara introduced her at that speaking engagement.] Okay.  I
do remember you! I'm sorry, I'm so slow on the uptake.

SH: No, no, I didn't tell you, I didn't think it was important.  That's
quite all right.

Is that still true?

DAJ: Yeah.  It is.  Well, it's funny.  People have been pointing out to
me how much writing I've gotten done, so there's something very
mysterious going on.  Since I've had <i>Crescent</i> come out, <i>The
Language of Baklava</i> has come out very quickly after that.  It's
really only a year or two since the novel that this memoir is coming
out.  And now I relize that I have almost a 500-page novel that I'm
almost done with.

SH: Oh my goodness!

DAJ: Yes!  Isn't it something?  I don't know where it comes from!  I
think that I do have a work ethic, it just doesn't look like anybody
else's work ethic.  It's that I'm very opportunistic about working and
that I write when I'm waiting for people in cafes, or I write in the car
or -- I do a lot of writing in the middle of the night.  And so, because
it's not sitting at a desk from nine to five every day, I don't consider
it, somehow, worthy of being called "work."  But it's just coming from
different angles at a different time.

SH: Can you tell me anything about the new book?

DAJ: Oooh.  Well, it still feels kind of magic and secret, but I can
tell you that it's a big departure.  I'm actually not writing
specifically from an Arab-American perspective.  It's still about
culture, but I've shifted the paradigm somewhat and it has elements of 
the mystery genre.  So I'm again -- you know,  I can't help it!  I just
keep pushing and I like to kind of explore more and more and more what I
can do with my art.  And so this is a real new approach for me.  I'm
curious to see what's going to happen with this.

SH: I assume you're releasing it under your real name.

DAJ: Oh, yes.  You know, people like Ishiguro are very inspiring to me
because - I'm reading his new book now - once again, Anglo-English
children, in a place in England.  He doesn't feel constrained by
culture.  He doesn't feel constrained by any kinds of those
expectations - who he, the author, is, and I love that.  I love that
freedom.  If I live in America, and I am living in this eclectic
cultural gathering, I want to make use of as many different
possibilities as I can, artistically.

SH: So you're just reading Ishiguro's novel now.  What else are you
watching and listening to?

DAJ: Oh, all - so many great things out, floating around right now.  I
was just sort of peeking through Ian McEwen's new book, <i>Saturday</i>.
I'm got <i>Kafka on the Shore</i> waiting to cracked open.  Gosh.  I've
picked up all these new books while I was on book tour, too.

SH: Well, right, because many bookstores have a "you speak here, you get
a free book" policy.

DAJ: Right.  You know, what I just picked up at a bookstore that did
that, was <i>French Women Don't Get Fat</i>.  Because I think that she
has the same basic theory as I do about how to eat.  Which is that it's
almost a sort of anti-diet.  Now, I haven't read her book, so I don't
know yet if it is the same, but my attitude is that if you just throw
caution to the wind and let your body tell you when and what to eat,
you'll be perfectly fine.  It's the same theory I have about locking my
doors and locking the car.  Don't lock anything.  Just lay it open and
you'll be fine.

SH: You sound like a Linux user.

DAJ: Really? [laughs]

SH: Are you?

DAJ: No.  But maybe I should be!

SH: I feel contractually obligated to tell you that you should be.
Because of all the time I've spent with the geeks in my life.

DAJ: Really?  OK.

SH: If you're a friend of radical openness and transparency, as a method
to greater happiness, then you're basically obligated to use Linux and
Firefox and whatnot.  Or at least Mac OSX, which is based on an
open-source engine.  What kind of computer do you use?

DAJ: Lemme look....it's the one that my husband got.

SH: This is Mr. Eason?

DAJ: This is Mr. Eason.  Mr. Scott, as we call him.

SH: The one who failed to teach you HTML [in the memoir]?

DAJ: That's right.  [laughs]  Poor Scotty.  He's a wonderful influence
in my life.  I call him my unofficial manager.  He knows all the
computer stuff.  He just bought this groovy new computer for me.  I'm
looking.  It's a Sony Vaio.  

SH: Ooh!

DAJ: You approve?

SH: Well, it's cool.  It's a cool little gadget.

DAJ: It's very cool.  It's very tiny!  It's smaller than a magazine!  I
LOVE this thing!  And you can take it on book tour and it doesn't rip
your arm out of its socket.  It's wonderful.

SH: Do you listen to music, also, when you're on tour?

DAJ: You know, they've kept me so busy.  I haven't done that.  Although
Scott wants me to get an iPod.  So that might be the next gadget in my
life.

SH: Are you listening to anything in particular these days?

DAJ: Let me look here.  What have I got?  You know, I listen to a lot of
world music, which I guess is not shocking.  I listen to a lot of rai
[sp?] music.  I like Chuck Nemi [sp?].  On top of my music list, I've
got the very best of Crowded House, I've got "White African" by Otis
Taylor, a wonderful blues musician.  I've got Thomas Dolby, I've got No
Doubt, I've got the Dixie Chicks, I've got White Town, Women In
Technology, and I've got Hooba Stank, and Usher.  I've got it all!
[laughs]

SH: Evidently, you do.

DAJ: Yeah!  Is it hot?  I like it!

SH: Do you watch television at all?

DAJ: I kind of watch vicariously through Mr. Scott.  He sits in the
living room, I sit in my office, supposedly working, but usually playing
computer solitaire, and I hear him in the other room laughing.  And
then, when something's really good, he'll go, "Honey, you gotta see
this!"  So I'll go running in there, and usually it's "South Park" or
it's "Survivor," or - oh, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."  I watch
that a LOT.  Yeah.  Yeah, I LOVE that show.  But I don't like it as much
- "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl," do not like as much.

SH: Really?  What makes it not as good?  The team that's making them
over?

DAJ: I don't feel like that particular cadre has quite got it down the
way the Fab Five does.  I feel like - I'm sorry, I'm getting a little
esoteric here.

SH: That's quite all right!  No, this is exactly the sort of hip, edgy,
high-culture/low-culture combination that Saucy is built to create.

DAJ: Oh, perfect!  Okay.  Well, in that case, I just don't feel like the
"Straight Girl" cast has really coalesced in quite the way I was
hoping that they would.  The woman in the show, I can't remember her
name, she's great.  I would keep her.  I think I might recycle some of
the other guys.  Or bring her in to the Fab Five, or -- something needs
to be realigned there.

SH: Do you think they need an Arab?

DAJ: Yeah!  Oooh!  Yeah, I like that.  Queer Eye for the Arab Guy.

SH: What would they do to them?

DAJ: Oh, wow!  Let's see.  Get rid of the aftershave.  No more Jheri
curl.  And those horrible polyester sweaters have got to go.  That whole
thing, I'm sorry.  And the tight slacks.  NO.  No more tight slacks.
Yeah.  It....It would be a whole show unto itself.  There's a lot that
needs to be done there.

SH: About Arab men in America or Arab men in the world?

DAJ: Well, I'd say both.  The umbrella term for Arab men, back in the
old country, that's a whole other fashion disaster.  And then Arab men
in the states, it's an interesting breed, because I think they actually
are starting to get with the program.  When I was a kid, my cousins
coming over in the seventies were -- it was a disaster.  It was just
like -- these guys were wearing platform shoes, the big shirts
unbuttoned down to the belt buckle, and the gigantic, humongous, hanging
gold chain, Jesus on a cross, thing.  So that look, the seventies and
eighties Arab men disaster.

SH: And it's persisted?

DAJ: Well, there are strains.  There are definitely strains that have
persisted and remained loyal to their roots.  But there are a number of
guys who are really getting with the program, and I think it might have
to do with American cultural influence and television and movies.  I
hate to say that America should be the standard-bearer for culture.  It
certainly should not be.  But hipness and grooviness are a universal
language.  And the Arabs can speak it too.

SH: Is there anything else that you would like to tell the esteemed
readers?

DAJ: Gosh.  I think everybody should try to read as eclectically as they
can.  And to take chances in their reading.  It's just like trying new
food, that you want to be as adventurous of an eater and as adventurous
of a reader as you possibly can.  So I encourage people to try and break
beyond their usual reading pattern and try different things out and
different cultures and different books in translation.  And I hope
everyone comes to my web site [dianaabujaber.com] and writes something
on the "Dinner Conversation" site too.

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