Beyond Refuge in Arab Detroit

Detroit's Arab and Chaldean communities in the balance between cultural vitality and precarity.

Detroit's Arab and Chaldean communities are now over a century old. Their neighborhoods, business districts, and cultural influence continue to grow. Whether Muslim or Christian, Yemeni, Iraqi, Palestinian, or Lebanese, these Detroiters are building new lives and new worlds in distinctive spaces that cannot be described simply as immigrant or refugee, religious or ethnoracial. In Beyond Refuge in Arab Detroit, a multidisciplinary team of nineteen contributors considers how these worlds are connected to other times and places and what new identities are emerging in them. They explore US census counts, local politics, activism, refugee resettlement, patterns of racism and Islamophobia, and tense interactions between new immigrants and the well established. The contributors warn that, despite its deep roots and dynamism, Arab Detroit is at risk. As its residents struggle for change on their own terms, they no longer perceive greater Detroit as a sanctuary or temporary home, but as a place were Arabs and Chaldeans can live permanently as citizens.

Yasmeen Hanoosh is a fiction writer, literary translator, and professor of Arabic at Portland State University. She is the author of The Chaldeans: Politics and Identity in Iraq and the American Diaspora and Ardh al-Khayrat al-Mal'unah (The Land of Cursed Riches), a collection of short stories in Arabic. Sally Howell is professor of history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She has written and edited numerous books including Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade and Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging (both Wayne State University Press); the latter named a Michigan Notable Book and recipient of an Arab American Book Award. Howell is also a curator of public history projects, including the Halal Metropolis exhibition series. Andrew Shryock is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He has authored and edited many books including Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream, Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade (both Wayne State University Press), and Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friend.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.