Etel Adnan
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Etel Adnan, born in 1925 in Beirut, is a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist.
In 2003 MELUS, the journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, called Adnan "arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today."
She has said, "As for any serious writer, the audience of an Arab–American cannot be confined to his or her fellow Arabs. Books have a life of their own and no one can determine their fate. The only thing we can strive for consciously is to be aware of the existence of a growing body of Arab–American literature, try to know it and make it known."[citation needed]
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[edit] Life
MELUS calls Adnan's life "a study in displacement and alienation." Daughter of a Christian Greek mother and a Muslim Syrian father, she grew up speaking Greek and Turkish in a primarily Arabic-speaking society. Yet she was educated at French convent schools, and French became the language in which her early work was first written. She has also studied English from her youth, and most of her later work has been first written in this language.
Caught between languages, in her youth Adnan first found her voice through painting rather than writing. In 1996 she recalled, "Abstract art was the equivalent of poetic expression; I didn't need to use words, but colors and lines. I didn't need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression."
At twenty-four Adnan traveled to Paris where she received a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne. She then traveled to America where she continued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley and at Harvard University. She taught philosophy of art at the Dominican University of California in San Rafael for many years, and has lectured at universities throughout the United States. She divides her time between California, France, and Lebanon.
[edit] Works
[edit] in English
- Sitt Marie Rose: A Novel (1978)
Written in French, the novel was translated into English in 1982. It was inspired by the true story of a woman killed in the Lebanese Civil War by a childhood friend who had become a member of the right-wing Christian Kataeb Party party. Because of its controversial nature, the Arabic translation of the book was not marketed in Christian East Beirut. The novel criticizes the violence both of a Christianity that is "not in actual communication with any force other than the Dragon" and an Islam "forgets all too often that the divine mercy affirmed by the first verse of the Koran can only be expressed by human mercy." - There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other (1997)
- To Write in a Foreign Language (1996)
- Of Cities and Women, Letters to Fawwaz (1993)
- Paris, When It's Naked (1993)
- The Spring Flowers Own and the Manifestations of the Voyage (1990)
- The Arab Apocalypse (1989)
- Journey to Mount Tamalpais: An Essay (1985)
- The Indian Never Had a Horse and Other Poems (1985)
- From A to Z Poetry (1982)
[edit] in Arabic
- al-Sitt Mari Ruz: riwayah. (Sitt Marie Rose.), with Jirum Shahin and Firyal Jabburi Ghazul.Al-Qahirah: al-Hayah al-Ammah li-Qusur al-Thaqafah, 2000.
- n mudun wa-nisa: rasail il Fawwaz. (Of Cities and Women.) Bayrut: Dar al-Hihar, 1998.
- Kitab al-bahr; kitab al-layal; kitab al-mawt; kitab al-nihayah, with Abid Azarih. Bayrut: Dar Amwaj, 1994.
- al-Sitt Marie Ruz. Bayrut: al-Mu-assasah al-Arabiyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr, 1979.
[edit] in French
- Ce ciel quinest pas. Paris: LHarmattan, 1997.
- Rachid Korachi: lcriture passion, with Rachid Korachi and Jamel-Eddine Bencheikh. Alger: Galerie Mhamed Issiakhem, 1988.
- Lapocalypse arabe. Paris: Papyrus Editions, 1980.
- Sitt Marie Rose. Paris: Des Femmes, 1978.
- Jbu: Suivi de lExpress Beyrouth enfer. Paris: P.J. Oswald, 1973.
