Art of Arab American Literature week 3

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For the third week of Arab-American literature, we read some poetry and watched a film by Suheir Hammad called Salt of This Sea. Originally I felt a better connection to the poems by Suheir Hammad after I learned of her rap oriented background while she grew up in Brooklyn New York. Rap is my favorite genre of music and seems to have the closest sound to that of a poet. Suheir Hammad’s poetry in particular reminded me of Slam poetry. I also appreciated Suheir’s lack of punctuation in her writing. When one raps a song they need to have a flow which is the cadence of an artist’s speech while reading their lyrics. Flow acts as a binding material between the beat of a song and the lyrics when it comes to rapping. 


I also love Suheir's great use of profanity when she reads a poem. I feel like there is an art to swearing and some languages and speakers such as Russians take pride in their swearing abilities. I've also learned that Arabs have some of the most creative ways of swearing with the implication of religion in everyday speech patterns. Suheir also does not always use proper punctuation in her writing. In order to maintain a flow of speech when reading a poem the writing itself is usually a flow of conscious thought that does not follow the rules of proper english. 


Additionally, I got to see the evolution of Suheir’s work with examples of different poems over her years of work. The inclusion of the film Salt of This Sea really helped to put a face to name when it comes to Suheir Hammad. Her acting abilities were fantastic in this movie and there were some really defining traits in Suheir’s character named Soraya. I appreciate that the depictions of Palestinian Arabs and Israelis were not sugar coated and Suheir was equally critical of both groups in her work. Suheir compares the trials and tribulations of Palestinian Arabs to those of African Americans in early 20th century America. These traits make Suheir Hammad’s work very intelligible for someone new to her work.(word count -338)

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