Arab-American Literature Analysis

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Political affairs in the Middle East have been greatly influencing the development of Arab-American literature. Political contexts provided an impetus for Arab-American writers to express political beliefs in their works and address the questions of identity, ideology, and other subjects connected to political actions. Most of the issues considered by writers and researchers of Arab-American literature can also be found in literatures of other “hyphenated” Americans. However, Arab-American literature have strongest bonds to the political history of the US, particularly to its foreign policy, as the US has had pervasive involvement in the affairs in the Middle East throughout the latter part of the XX century and to the present day. The question now arises of whether Arab-American literature can be considered outside of political contexts or politics is an integral part and the main issue in one way or another tackled in most of the Arab-American literary…show more content…
Nye’s humanist approach to politics in the Middle East and her political views eventually became part of her poetic messages. In “Her Way” she depicts a woman who lost her family and is trying to move on. This poem shows a tragedy of a single life, as contrasted to dehumanizing in the media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict: “the men who editorialized blood till it was pale and not worth spilling”, as well as to careless soldiers “flipping ID cards” (Nye 23). Although the main subject of the poem is the life of a human being and the consequences of war, in order to properly analyze the poem, we need to examine the political context. “Her Way” addresses the subject of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as uncovers the problem of its biased media coverage, which established certain misleading stereotypes about Arabs all around the

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