Muslim and Arab Writers Are Challenging Western Imperialism's Narrative

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https://truthout.org/articles/muslim-and-arab-writers-are-challenging-western-imperialisms-narrative/

Muslim and Arab Writers Are Challenging Western Imperialism’s Narrative

In a new anthology, writers from Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) tell the stories the West tries to erase.

By Peter Handel , TRUTHOUT
Published May 25, 2024

The recently released anthology Stories From the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights, 2024) collects short stories written by a variety of Arab, Iranian and Kurdish writers, as well as authors with varied identities and experiences, including people whose parents have been immigrants, and writers with multinational and multilingual backgrounds.

Anthology editor Jordan Elgrably, who identifies as Franco-American-Moroccan, has been engaged in cultural work based in diasporic Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern communities since the ‘90s. With other Angelenos of Middle Eastern and North African heritage, he opened a cultural center in Los Angeles devoted to the region prior to 9/11. As the founder of The Markaz Review, he has published literature and political analysis from some of the most trenchant voices in the Arab and Muslim world. Elgrably is an outspoken advocate for the protection of writers and the right to free expression.

In this exclusive interview with Truthout, Elgrably explains the problem with the term “the Middle East” as coined by Western imperialists and discusses how Israel’s systematic murder of writers and poets in Gaza is part of a concerted effort to limit public knowledge about its crimes. The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

…more… interview transcript…