For instance, when her aunt Fatima heard that she was turning thirty soon, she made a big fuss about it insomuch so she became the main topic of her Arab relatives’ gossip.Ību-Jaber’s humour throughout the novel also covers many serious and vital issues. Jemorah never understood the traditional Arab customs, and she always felt pressured to live up to them. She lost her mother Nora, who was white, at the age of three on a trip to Jordan, and was bewildered by her father’s close relations with his relatives who lived in Syracuse’s Arab community. The novel is divided into thirty-nine chapters where the protagonist Jemorah Ramoud struggled the most with her sense of self. Melvina is dedicated to her job as a nurse, whereas Jemorah, who is nearly turning thirty, questions her identity. Matuseem, the Jordanian father, widower and Jazz drummer annoyed by his sister Fatima, the typical Arabic aunt who is obsessed with seeing her nieces marrying Arab men. Issued in 1993, this amusing novel explores Abu-Jaber’s self-identity and background through her relatives. Our book recommendation of the month is Diana Abu-Jaber’s Arabian Jazz, her first published and remarkable contemporary Arab-American debut novel. It’s like she abandoned us, left us alone to work it all out. I haven’t figured out what part our mother is, either. I’m tired of fighting it out here, I don’t have much idea of what it is to be Arab, but that’s what the family is always saying we are.
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