okay Hunter Arabic [Classical & Oriental ]Spring 2020
Dr. K Wilson Arab Women Making Culture
Creative writing Project
Purpose: To learn about Arab women’s lives and textual culture through fictional, empathetic imagination
Due: after spring break, April 25. Draft in class for peer-exchange. Submit before 11 4/26
PARAMETERS
Length: 3 min-6 max, double-spaced, 1 inch margin
GENRE Short story
FORM
• Narrator: 3rd person, limited, impersonal, reliable
• Includes detailed description (body, setting, action ) + dialogue + interior thoughts/feelings
• Chronology: continuous (except mental flashback or fantasy), ashort span
• Location: one spot is good, or it covers space that’s feasible in the time-frame
• Repetition: One or both
o Keywords: weave in variations of core words and related words. Example: AlHillo: Water/Swim/Drown; Al-Zayat, Borders/Lines; most poems
o Theme or Motif: like keywords, expanded to a broad web of associations with one concept that crops up in dialogue, thoughts, a physical thing in the scene, images of the thing (a painting of it), references (such as a news report or song lyric), and actions associated with the word. Example: Al-Zayat: Speak; Chreiteh.
o Also may echo particular Sounds: external like vehicle horns; narrator’s words repeat specific syllables; characters repeat similar sound (Ugh!)
STYLE: Modernist Realism or Social Realism
• The narrated events are credible, could-have-happened in a rational world (though characters’ thoughts, or their own stories, may be non-realistic)
• Main characters are “rounded”: try to assign ‘good’ characters some foible; avoid stereotype or cliché from mass media entertainment (wicked step-mother)
• Involves some tension or conflict, such as power differential, emotional friction, misunderstanding, disappointment.
• Doesn’t need big “drama” (war, wedding, winning, etc.); or takes a marginal angle to those
• Ending: nice to echo the repeated element; subtle endings are welcome (more than big event, full resolution)
LANGUAGE: English.
Some Arabic phrases are welcome but must be translated inthe prose
… باب (door) OR …..door (باب) OR …..bab(door)
For complex phrases, it’s OK to place explanation in a footnote
To convey different modes of Arabic speech (fus.ha, rural, urban, dialect, etc.), try to approximate differences in English — ya’ll, for whom, etc.
CONTENT
TITLE original; embodies or echoes key aspects of your story; may include Arabic; may be question or play with saying
Approaches:
1. Fictionalize Arab women’s oral culture based on course material:
• Festival participants in El-Ges, in the city of Mecca during the Haj (up to 1920)
• Herbalist, in Moroccan city outdoor market or market-square
• (Apprentice) public halqa storyteller, in Moroccan city square
• Hakaye, ordinary, mature woman storyteller among family, in a Palestinian community with rural roots (West Bank, Gaza, refugee camp in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon)
Tips:
Stay accurate! Review the sources
Incorporate speech formulas, proverbs, “frame” phrases;
May invent new poems in the same style as the original
Halqa or Hakawati tales my draw from a folk tale source on Blackboard
Research images/data to get a feel for the context
2. Build from course fiction: set one of the author’s characters in another moment, or narrate the same situation from another angle, or invent a “missing scene”
For example:
• Bakr. Sequel: follow one of the students later that day; the Headmistress meeting the First Lady; Headmistress talkingwith teacher Uthman following class
• Bakr. Shift point of view: the same lesson time, more from a girl student’s perspective
• Al-Zayat. Backstory: the Great Aunt as a girl in Syria
• Al-Zayat. Sequel: the girl talks with her father later
• Chreiteh. A scene with Yana & Yasmine (minus Abeer); Abeer at college; Yasmine at home
Tips:
Maintain the qualities the original – speech style; persona; dynamics
Research images/data get a feel for the context
OK to borrow brief phrases of narration or speech, but strive to paraphrase or invent new prose & speech similar to the original’s
More tips come in class
3. Other invented content, or fictionalized autobiographical scenario by approval before April
