My research inquiry for my final project is: How can I use art making and writing processes to examine my identity as a Muslim Syrian American? The sub questions I will look into include: 1. What can I discover/discuss about my identity through research: history, methodology, and contemporary artists/writers? 2. How can I express my findings through poetry? 3. How can I express this through an art piece that relates to/emerges from the poetry piece? 4. How has examining/experimenting with both creative methods influenced the way that I think/approach art making, and respond to the question of identity?
I expect to have thought through new ways of approaching art making that strongly relate to storytelling, which convey similar themes and connect visual language to creative writing. I hope to uncover more about the idea of identity that will then be translated into different forms of craft. My expected outcomes include: 1-3 poems/vignettes, and 1-3 tapestries woven on a hand loom, no larger than 7”x7”.
I first began with reading some of my own past written poems, to see what/how I was writing for my past creative writing courses. It was a good way of reviewing what I have learned about writing poetry. I noticed that I focused a lot on Islam/Hijab in my first creative writing class. In my advanced level poetry writing class I focused mostly on Syria/Childhood. It reminded me of some of the poetry forms that I enjoy writing (although I will probably stick with free verse), and also the ways that I approached talking about these topics. I also have read books/stories by the authors Matthew Salesses, Tommy Orange, Linda Hogan, and Sandra Cisneros. They all deal with ideas of identity.
From reading these authors, I have found that they approach identity through things like place, and many of them write about their transformations from childhood to now. This inspired me to do so myself in my series of three poems.
Here are some ideas I brainstormed that I wanted to explore in my poems:
· choosing identity
· Times I haven't felt "Arab" or "American" enough
· Cultural foods as a means for connections
· Nature, place, and buildings and how that shapes who you are
So, I decided to think of my poems in three phases. Phase 1 discusses my childhood, moments where I struggled to fit in and other moments I felt I belonged, using place like the mountains to get this across. I have written three of these poems, although I think I would like to write one more. I will choose one to become the subject of my tapestry. Phase 2 will cover my time in Syria, the discoveries I made and the culture shock, and feeling different because I did not grow up there, but also feeling like I belonged being surrounded by family. Phase 3 is where I will write about embracing both parts of my identity. After I have written them all, I will choose the three that most cohesively fit together to tell a story about identity and change.
My poetry process:
Phase 1: A Sort-of American Childhood
Poem #1
The Colorado foothills frame my childhood
They always lingered like a painting in the distance,
A compass anchoring west, pulling me towards them
Horsetooth pointing towards the sky,
A rock that seems too square and bare within the rolling peaks
The oranges and pinks that dipped down to those stones
During summer sunsets-
I saw them on the way to the Friday night prayers
And I would say lookto my family and point
As we drove through familiar neighborhood streets lined in pointed wood houses
And I watched engrossed as the colors deepened, changed, darkened
Into the lid of night
Poem #2
She was born here- in Fort Collins
A little girl with a foreign name that appeared
As the publisher on encyclopedias
Or as a button on calculators
The kids in her class,
The Sams, Taylors, Annas
Didn’t quite know what to make of the little girl
Whose name was not spelled as it was pronounced
By their English tongues
One teacher the little girl corrected every week in second grade,
That teacher never got it right
So she supposed she should give it up-
Maybe it wasn’t so bad If people said it wrong
She was goofy and gullible and perhaps
Not as American
As the classmates who celebrated the holidays
They did crafts for in class,
The green layers of her paper Christmas tree and
Carol singing so familiar for something she
Was not taught to believe in
Her father baked baklava that she brought to school,
And it was often that people would ask her for them
They were like magic- all of a sudden they noticed her
Sitting in the corner
As they held those pastry swirls,
Green pistachios in filo shells
Sticky in their hands from the carameled-sugar coating
A delicacy of her people
Back in Syria
She liked showing off
When classmates were impressed
With her knowledge of Arabic
She’d say tree and book and water
And they’d say it back
Struggling over throaty consonants
Most of the time though,
She just did her best to fit in
She sang those carols and corrected her name and went to their parties
And she hoped that perhaps, just perhaps, they would not notice
She was different
Poem #3
Smith park is what they called it.
It had a longer name,
But it was hard to pronounce and even harder to remember
They drove along that winding mountain road
That would take them to Estes
But their stop was much closer-
A sudden right turn off the main road.
They parked their car
Unloaded the raw kabobs,
The kibbeh and tabbouleh
And coolers full of sodas
And set up at a picnic table,
Started the grill
They greeted their friends in cheek kisses
The mothers sat at a separate table nearby, spreading out the dishes
The fathers barbecued those kabobs
and the children ran down to the shore
Snuck cups away to dip them into the river
And pull out tiny minnows to watch them loop around
For a minute before setting them free.
They sent their flip flops slightly down stream
Laughing as they caught them before they could float away
They splashed and pulled out rocks smoothed and sparkling
By the rushing water
In those moments in those mountains they always felt
That perhaps they belonged
Phase 2: In Syria
I realized I don’t know anything
I didn’t even realize I was drinking sheeps milk
Fraying prayer beads
Ancestors who pressed dough into maamoul molds
My father who wrapped fillo dough into tiny tubes of sweetness
Poem about the city- phase 2
Poem about meeting family for the first time- phase 2 (didn’t know what it was like to have lots of family nearby before)
Poem about mazzraas,- phase 2
Poem about mosques/the Athan, hearing it in the whole city, different and beautiful (majority vs minority) – phase 2
Phase 3: The Embracing of Both
Poem #1
Who knew that Aleppo blood would be walking through an old Colorado town
Wrapped in black gloves and grey jacket,
Feet encased in fur lined boots-
perhaps snowing, or just the wind
blowing snow off crabapple trees
A chill lurks over undisturbed snow
brushing against her fabric shell
night clouds glowing orange, snow blurring the mountain frame
Arms like a gradient of warmth from finger tips to shoulder blades
The roofs and trees trimmed in bulbs of the other houses of
that cul-de-sac where she rode her scooter round and round
sit patiently beneath that blanket,
her own house bare of Christmas cheer
Back In Syria, white has only covered the streets once
maybe twice in their memory
and though they are no strangers to the cold
Aleppo tans become dulled in the frigid winter air
In that coated silence,
Thick like a heaping mound of white rice
Aleppo blood relished that moment of stillness
Where the world stopped and nature could not care less
Who she was or where she came from
More Ideas:
A translator is a bridge between worlds
We measure angles where two lines meet
Cold sunlight streamed through the trees
Poem about wrapping grape leaves (end with it’s a choice which side hold most dear)- phase 3
It’s a choice, which heritage you choose to hold most dear
Poem about the new mosque- phase 3
Poem about hijab- phase 3
So there are some themes that have so far emerged in my writing:
Space
Names
Food
