The United States Through Arab Eyes: An Anthology of Writings (1876-1914) [Paperback]

The first Arab immigrants to New York or Alaska or San Francisco were 'small' men and women, preoccupied with eking a living at the same time as confronting the challenges of settling in a new country. They had to come to terms with new race communities such as Indians, Chinese and Blacks, the changing role of women, and the Americanisation of their identity.

Their writings about these experiences - from travellers and emigrants, rich and poor, men and women - took the form of travelogues and newspaper essays, daily diaries and adventure narratives, autobiographies and histories, full-length books published in the Ottoman Press in Lebanon and journal articles in Arabic newspapers printed in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Together they show the transnational perspective of immigrants as they reflected on and described the United States for the very first time.

Acknowledgements

Some notes on the translations

Part One: Emigration, the Arab Nahda and the United States of America - An Introduction

Part Two: The Texts

Section One: Minorities
1. The Book of the Description of Kingdoms by Idwar Ilyas, 1876
2. Kawkab America by Abraham Arbeely
3. Alaska and the Klondike: Land of Gold by Jibra'il 'Assaf Mir'I, early 1890s
4. Instructive Travels in the New World by Dr Naguib Abdou (1907/1908/1909)
5. The American Journey by Prince Muhammad 'Ali Pasha, 1912

Section Two: Women and Gender
1. The Book of the Description of Kingdoms by Idwar Ilyas, 1876
2. The Traveler's Guidebook: and the history of America by Saj'an Effendi 'Arij Sa'adeh
3. 'The [female] Syrian emigrant' by Miss Wadi'a Faris Rashid
4. 'Who has precedence: man or woman?' by Mrs Asma Sabir
5. 'The need to put a limit on or to pass a law prohibiting the Syrian woman from emigrating to America'
6. The Stranger in the West by Mikha'il Rustum Shuwayri, 1895