Kahf, Mohja 1967-

PERSONAL:

Born 1967, in Damascus, Syria; immigrated to United States, 1971; married Najib Ghadbian; children: three. Ethnicity: "Arab-American." Education: Rutgers University, B.A. (with honors), 1988, Ph.D., 1994. Religion: Muslim.

ADDRESSES:

Office—English Department, Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences, 333 Kimpel Hall, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, instructor, 1994-95; University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, assistant professor, 1995-2000, associate professor of comparative literature, 2001—.

MEMBER:

Ozark Poets & Writers Collective, Radius of Arab-American Writers, Association of Middle East Women's Studies, Syrian Studies Association, Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society, Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars.

AWARDS, HONORS:

First-place award, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1983, for best college poetry in New Jersey; Garden State fellowship, 1988-92; Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship, 2002; finalist, Paterson Literary Prize, 2004, for E-mails from Scheherazad.

WRITINGS:

Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1999.

E-mails from Scheherazad (poetry), University of Florida Press (Gainesville, FL), 2003.

The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor of articles to books and anthologies, including Radius of Arab American Writers Anthology, RAWI, 1999; The Space between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1998; and Windows of Faith: Muslim Women's Scholarship and Activism, edited by Gisela Webb, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 2000. Contributor of poetry to journals, including Paris Review, Exquisite Corpse, and Atlanta Review. Contributor to periodicals, including Arab Studies Quarterly, Washington Post, Banipal, Cyphers Literary Journal, and World Literature Today. Contributor of short stories and creative nonfiction to the Web site Muslim WakeUp!

SIDELIGHTS:

In her first book, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque, Mohja Kahf examines the changing representation of Muslim women in literature. She takes examples from medieval chansons, Renaissance drama, Enlightenment prose, and romantic poetry of the early nineteenth century. She shows the changing images of Muslim women in relationship to Western interactions with the Islamic world. Rachel Simon in MELA Notes Book Reviews commented, "This book adds an important dimension to the study of Western attitudes towards the Muslim world."

In 2003 Kahf published a collection of poetry titled E-mails from Scheherazad. In a Booklist review of this work, Donna Seaman described Kahf as "whimsical, colloquial and disarmingly witty," calling some of her poems "brilliantly wry and utterly irresistible."

Kahf draws heavily on her own immigrant experience in The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel. The book tells the story of Khadra Shamy, a young Syrian girl who moves to a small American town with her family as a young child. Raised in a devout Muslim household, Khadra faces racism and bigotry from her neighbors and schoolmates. However, the author also criticizes Khadra's family for their own brand of racism and for the expectations they put on the girl. Intent on finding her own identity, Khardra goes back to Syria before finally returning to the United States with a more complete sense of who she really is and wants to be. While a Publishers Weekly reviewer found Khadra a "compelling protagonist," the reviewer added that Khaf's criticisms of religion and society are "heavy-handed." Neil MacFarquhar, on the other hand, observed in a New York Times feature that Kahf "draws sharp, funny, earthy portraits of the fault line separating Muslim women from their Western counterparts." The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, MacFarquhar added, "turned Ms. Kahf into something of an idol among Muslim American women."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 2003, Donna Seaman, review of E-mails from Scheherazad, p. 1141.

Choice, January, 2000, A. Mahdi, review of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque, p. 992.

New York Times, May 12, 2007, Neil MacFarquhar, "She Carries Weapons; They Are Called Words."

Publishers Weekly, August 14, 2006, review of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel, p. 180.

ONLINE

ArteEast,http://www.arteeast.org/ (October 17, 2007), Lisa Suhair Majaj, "‘Supplies of Grace’: The Poetry of Mohja Kahf," review of E-mails from Scheherazad.

MELA Notes Book Reviews,http://www.lib.umich.edu/ (October 23, 2001), Rachel Simon, review of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman.

Muslim Women's League Newsletter,http://www.mwlusa.org/ (August 30, 2007).

Nerve.com,http://www.nerve.com/ (July 30, 2007), Sara Harrison, interview with Mohja Kahf.

University of Arkansas Web site,http://www.uark.edu/ (July 30, 2007), Mohja Kahf faculty page.

WebIslam,http://English.webislam.com/ (July 30, 2007), Bettina Lehovec, review of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.