In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles. Contributors hail from multiple geographical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist commitments and ambiguities and to highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the place of Arab Jews in Arab and Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the countries in which they live wage wars in the lands of their ancestors. This work opens up new possibilities for placing grounded perspectives at the center of gender, Middle East, American, and ethnic studies. -- From publisher.

Rabab Abdulhadi is associate professor of ethnic studies/race and resistance studies and senior scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative at San Francisco State University. She is a coauthor of Mobilizing Democracy. Her articles have appeared in Gender and Society, Radical History Review, Peace Review, Journal of Women's History, Ms. Magazine, the Guardian, and Palestine Focus, as well as Arab-language newspapers and magazines. Evelyn Alsultany is assistant professor in the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan. Her articles have appeared in American Quarterly, Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11, and The Arab Diaspora. She is the author of Arabs and Muslims in the Media Post 9/11. Nadine Naber is assistant professor in the Department of Women's Studies and the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Feminist Studies, Journal of Ethnic Studies, and Journal of Cultural Dynamics. She is a coeditor of Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11 and author of Articulating Arabness. --Book Jacket.

pt. 1 Living with/in empire, grounded subjectivities :Beyond words / Suheir Hammad -- The political and cultural representations of Arabs, Arab Americans, and Arab American feminisms after September 11, 2011 / Mervat F. Hatem -- Palestinian women's disappearing act : the suicide bomber through Western feminist eyes / Amal Amireh -- Arab Jews, diasporas, and multicultural feminism : an interview with Ella Shohat / Evelyn Alsutany -- In the belly of the beast : struggling for nonviolent belonging / Zeina Zaatari -- Decolonizing culture : beyond Orientalist and anti-orientalist feminisms / Nadine Naber -- Ianna / Dynya Mikhail, -- translated from the Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow -- pt. 2 Defying categories, thinking and living out of the box : Between the lines / Youmna Chlala -- Quandaries of representation / Mona el-Ghobashy -- Dyke march, San Francisco, 2004 : many are intrigued by the fact that I am also a belly dancer / Happy/L.A. Hyder -- The pity committee and the careful reader : how not to buy stereotypes about Muslim women / Mohja Kahf -- History's traces : personal narrative, diaspora, and the Arab Jewish experience / Kyla Wazana Tompkins -- pt. 3 Activist communities, representation, resistance, and power : The burden of representation : when Palestinians speak out / Nada Elia -- Taking power and making power : resistance, global politics, and institution building : an interview with Anan Ameri / Nadine Naber -- Inside out : youth of color organizing from multiple sites : an interview with Janaan Attia / Nadine Naber -- Arabiya made invisible : between marginalization of agency and silencing of dissent / Noura Erakat -- On Rachel Corrie, Palestine, and feminist solidarity / Therese Saliba -- Just peace Seder / Toronto Just Peace Seder Community -- Dissidents, displacements, and diasporas : an interview with Dena al-Adeeb / Nadine Naber -- pt. 4 On our own terms, discourses, politics, and feminisms : Arab American feminisms : mobilizing the politics of invisibility / Amira Jarmakani -- Class equality, gender justice, and living in harmony with Mother Earth : an interview with Joe Kadi / Nadine Naber -- Personal and political : the dynamics of Arab American feminism / Susan Muaddi Darraj -- Teaching scriptural texts in the classroom : the question of gender / Moulouk Berry -- The light in my house / Imani Yatouma -- Guidelines / Lisa Suhair Majaj -- Reflections of a genderqueer Palestinian American lesbian mother / Huda Jadallah -- pt. 5 Home and homelands, memories, exile, and belonging : The memory of your hands is a rainbow / Amal Hassan Fadlalla, -- translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa -- You are a 14-year-old Arab chick who just moved to Texas / Randa Jarrar -- The long road home / Sherene Seikaly -- The legacy of exile : an excerpt / Emanne Bayoumi -- Stealth Muslim / Evelyn Alsultany -- Where is home? Fragmented lives, borders crossings, and the politics of exile / Rabab Abdulhadi.