الأدب العربي والآخر الأفريقي
بعدما انتقلتُ للدراسة في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية، عملتُ باحثة تحت إشراف المفكر والباحث الكيني الراحل علي مزروعي. في تلك المرحلة من حياته، كان مزروعي قد يأس من الأحلام العروبية والأفريقية معًا ،...
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The Mingus Poems
Loring Eutemey, album artwork for Charles Mingus, Oh Yeah, 1961. AtlanticCHARLES MINGUS EGGNOG RECIPESeparate one egg for one person. Each person gets an egg. Two sugars for each egg, each person. One...
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The Feminist Novel is on the Rise in the Arab Gulf: An Interview With Mona...
(c) Manal HusainMona Kareem is the author of three poetry collections in Arabic, a translator, and a literary scholar whose research is offering new critical perspectives on feminist novels in the Arab...
View ArticleEulogies for Futures to come مرثيات مستقبلية
Mona Kareem & Metropole Orkest50th Poetry International Festival Rotterdam,De Doelen, 13th June 2019
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FEMME GHOSTS إناث الأشباح Vrouwelijke Geesten
This poetry pamphlet is now available in EN/Ar/DE from Publication Studio - Fall 2019 https://www.publicationstudio.biz/books/femme-ghosts/
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Imprisoned Windows
One time when I was a booksellerI took over the store windowand stacked books by poets in prison.The owner came in and wrote CURRENTLY IMPRISONED“this way it gives me the shivers,”she said. Surrounding...
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الذاهب إلى المكان: سركون بولص يترجم نفسه وغيره
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The Final Hours of a Statue
On May 29, 2020 a protesting black man broke off the hand of Louis XVI’s statue in Louisville, Kentucky. He then passed it around for people to take selfies with.Louis XVI was the last king of France...
View Articleأغنية الأغاني
1ماذا سنفعل بالمغنّية؟ها هي تقف في غرفة العرض الضيقةاختارتها بعنايةلتلتصق ذبذباتها بناتستأمننا هذا السر ندخل الحفلكما يدخل اليائس بيت قارئة الطالعالصوت من أمامناوالحانة من خلفنالا تسألنا عن مصادر...
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حول ترجمة رواية “نسب” ﻷوكتافيا بتلر
قضيتفيترجمةهذهالروايةمايقاربالعاممنالعملاليومي. خرجتمنهابشعورمنمربرحلةتحولميثولوجيةمزقتنيإلىأشلاءلتعيدتشكيليمنجديد....
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The Exact Number of Stars: André Naffis-Sahely Translates Ribka Sibhatu
Last year, I was asked by an American editor to submit a selection of my poems for an anthology of contemporary Arabic poetry. “Self-translations are not allowed,” came her disclaimer, predicated on...
View Articleعلى أطلال الأدب القومي أو عن أدب يكتبه الغرباء
ها نحن ثانية في المنفى، لسنا بأول جيل عربي يسّيب نفسه للمتاهة كما لن نكون الأخيرين، يسموننا مهاجرين تارة أو لاجئين ومهمشين تارة أخرى، يدعوننا للحديث عن الهامش من الهامش "كيف هو الطقس على...
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From Rap to Trap: The Khaliji Migrant Finds his Aesthetic
This article explores the trajectories and artistic productions of Arabic‑speaking hip hop artists of migrant background in the Gulf countries (especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia). More specifically,...
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How Ra’ad Abdulqadir Changed the Iraqi Prose Poem Forever
It’s late 90s Baghdad: with a trembling heart and weak joints, Ra’ad Abdulqadir, the editor of Aqlam literary magazine, would return from his office to his home in the western outskirts of the capital...
View ArticleBidoon: A Cause and Its Literature Are Born
In a brilliant and personal essay on the history of Bidoon literature, Mona Kareem shows why literature cannot be thought along national lines.Translation from Arabic: Alice Guthrie1.Here we are in...
View ArticleTHE ROOM OF ESCAPE & LEISURE
The lights are always on in the room of escape & leisure.If you're passing by, you might mistake it for the dim glow of a falling miracle.On its wall, a woman with her babyand goat sit still on...
View ArticleMapping Exile: A Writer’s Story of Growing Up Stateless in Post-Gulf War Kuwait
Sitting on a green couch in what is now a bedbug-infested Brooklyn apartment, I suddenly realized that my flight to meet my family for the first time in five years was actually tonight, not tomorrow;...
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خرائط المنفى
جالسة على أريكة خضراء في شقة بروكلينية باتت الآن موبوءة ببقّ الفراش، أدركتُ فجأة أن موعد رحلة طيراني للقاء عائلتي لأول مرة منذ خمس سنوات كان الليلة، وليس غداً؛ أي 12:30 بعد منتصف الليل، وليس 12:30 وقت...
View ArticleWestern Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations
Mona Kareem on the colonial phenomenon of rendition as translation 1Earlier this year, an English translation of Yi Lei, a prominent poet of the ’80s generation in China, was released by Graywolf...
View ArticleFour poems - tr: Sara Elkamel
The Migrant Poet Slaughters His VoiceOne scorching summer—warmer than the previous summer,and cooler than the next—the poet journeyed from the upper southto the lower south.He descended, and at the...
View ArticleHope Dissidents - tr. Sara Elkamel
When we die,the cemetery keeper tiresof surveilling our graves’ windows.We trace the memory of rain —but it dances in the distancewhere the lilies quake the earthuntil its dreams unwind.When my...
View ArticleThree Poems
Abracadabra Fear sometimes washes over meI close my eyes and slow down my breathingI remind myself of the magic words:Now + HereNow: It is Thursday, March 10Here: My Boston apartmentI begin by...
View Articleثلاث قصائد
أبراكادابراينتابني الخوف أحياناًأغمض عيناي وأبطئ من حركة أنفاسيأذكر نفسي بالكلمتين السحريتين:"الآن + هنا"الآن: اليوم الخميس ١٠ مارسهنا: شقتي في بوسطنأبدأ بعّد محتويات جسدي:رأس، عينان، كتفان،بطن ذات...
View ArticlePerdition (trans and intro by Sara ElKamel)
Roses take their own lifeabove the rim of my bedas my mothertries to tuck me into the desert of life*In the courtyard of my soulis a small devil;a newborn*Another shipasphyxiatesthe ocean’s larynx*The...
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Arabic Literature and the African Other
When I first migrated to the United States, I worked as research assistant to Ali Mazrui, the late Kenyan thinker and scholar. At that point of his life, Mazrui had grown hopeless of pan-African and...
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