America in an Arab Mirror Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature, 1668 to 9/11 and Beyond

This distinguished anthology presents for the first time in English travel essays by Arabic writers who have visited America in the second half of the century. The view of America which emerges from these accounts is at once fascinating and illuminating, but never monolithic. The writers hail from a variety of viewpoints, regions, and backgrounds, so their descriptions of America differently engage and revise Arab pre-conceptions of Americans and the West. The country figures as everything from the unchanging Other, the very antithesis of the Arab self, to the seductive female, to the Other who is both praiseworthy and reprehensible.

Kamal Abdel-Malek is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Alberta in Toronto.

America in the Eyes of a Nineteenth-Century Arab * A Stranger in the West: The Trip of Mikhail Asad Rustum to America, 1885-1894--Mikhail Asad Rustum * The Making of an Image: America as the Unchanged Other, America as the Seductive Female * The America I Have Seen--Sayyid Qutb * An American Immigrant--Ahmad Mustafa * A Love Tour--Mahmud Awad * New York 80--Yusuf Idris * America: The Dream and the Reality * America in the Eyes of an Easterner, Or Eight Years in the U.S.--Philip K. Hitti * Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual--Hisham Sharabi * Land of Magic--Shafiq Jabri * My Days in America--Zaki Najib Mahmud * America [Top Secret]--Ahmad Haridi * The Washington Memoirs--Yusuf al-Hasan * America in the Eyes of Arab Women Travelers * America and I--Jadhibiyya Sidqi * An Egyptian Girl in America--Karima Kamal * The Trip: The Days of an Egyptian Female Student in America--Radwa Ashur * America’s Other Face--Layla Abu Zayd * America...The Way It Is--Hala Sarhan * Satirical Views on America * Cheerful America of the Past--Mustafa Amin * My Story with Ivana Trump--Ali Salim * America, You Cheeky Devil--Mahmud al-Saadani * The Sabeel--Kamal Abdel-Malek