Arab Americans: Common Ground and Diversity
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Born in New Jersey to Palestinian immigrants, Joseph Haj is one of only a handful of resident theatre Artistic Directors in the nation who identify as people of color, and the only Arab American. Here he reflects on a late-night "tech" rehearsal of Shakespeare's Pericles, performed in 2008 by PlayMakers Repertory Company at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Pericles doesn't do anything particularly wrong to lose everything or anything particularly right to get it back," says Haj. "That's how life goes."
Set design by Jan Chambers, Resident Designer, PlayMakers Repertory Company
Since September 11, 2001, what it means to be American, Arab or some combination of the two has become more vital and complex, yet in common categorical images the Arabs most people learn about all look the same: like no one we know. They are unfriendly, unreasonable, cranky, sexist, dogmatic, or excessively passive. They are distinctly un-American.
Americans of Arab descent, from recent immigrants to the fourth generation, offer a range of alternative and meaningful narratives that are rarely examined in public media spaces.
Arab Americans: Common Ground and Diversity explores the complex continuum of culture and identity among Americans who have roots in the Arab world. Photographer Amy Joseph and writer Bethany Chaney examine everyday lives, including expressions of personal faith, civic participation and worklife, intimacy within the home, and the intersections and relationships between Americans, Arabs, and their blended kin. The artists are concentrating their work on three distinctive regions of the country where high concentrations of multi-generational Arab descendants live: the deep South, Southern California, and the Chicago metropolitan area.