Exhibition Statement

Zainab w ad-Dimm: Binational Children’s Books

Exhibition Statement

Jenna DiMaggio

Introduction

Think about a book from your childhood that changed how you saw the world. Storytelling connects and shapes cultures across borders, changing themes and even structure to fit their context. This project investigates ways of storytelling throughout the Arabic-speaking world, focusing on themes, structure, and how these methods are negotiated across bicultural experiences. To unify these findings, a physical Arabic-language children’s book will be produced

Literature Review

Literature in both the areas of influence (artistic, linguistic, literary) as well as subject (form, themes) of Arabic children’s literature was considered. Linguistically, there is a shift towards the use of non-standardized dialect (3amiyya), which children learn as their mother tongue, and away from Modern Standard Arabic (Fus’hā), which is learned in school. “children’s books written in fus’hā have a way of sounding antiquated at best, when read aloud” (ArabLit Quarterly n.p.). Resultantly, the project incorporates much Yemeni 3amiyya. Arabic literature also has a didactic element, questioned now in a secularizing world while also bolstering itself as diaspora literature in the subject tries to find common identity (Dünges 173). Because of this, the project tries to reconcile older storytelling methods with newer themes pertaining to cross-cultural concerns. 

Methods

The first research method used was a media review of arabophone and anglophone children’s books to glean storytelling elements used in each. Reviews of these and other manuscripts also evaluated visual elements like marginalia and pattern. Elements of art were noted and the most recurring qualities synthesized. Second, a literature review was conducted of existing ethnographies detailing ways in which Arabic-speaking writers constructed their stories for children. Among these pieces the authors negotiated with concerns regarding diaspora and loss of mother tongue, religion and modernity, and standard Arabic versus dialect. 

Audience & Impact

There are two audiences for this project: first, this research is useful for students and researchers with an interest in comparative/children’s literature and diaspora studies, since the project’s overarching question asks what qualities are found in panarabic storytelling and how are they reconciled for children in a cross-cultural context. 

The second audience deals with the book, which was designed with preliterate children or those learning to read in mind. This group would also be Arabic-speaking and raised within a different culture than their mother tongue; since the book was made with this audience in mind, they would find it more accessible. Illustrations will aid young readers in understanding the context of unfamiliar words, while using the story structure undergirding this research will bring a familiar cadence to fulfill their expectations. 

This topic was chosen because as the world becomes more interconnected, so expands the need for an understanding of how stories change and are changed by their cultural contexts, even at the childhood level. Arabic was used due to my own professional interests, but this topic transcends borders and language.The personal impacts this would have are an increased knowledge of storytelling across different cultures as well as practical knowledge regarding book production. 

References

Dünges, Petra. “Arabic Children's Literature Today: Determining Factors and Tendencies.” Modern Language Association, vol. 126, no. 11, pp. 170-181, January 2011, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41414089.

“The (Arabic) Children’s Book Dilemma.” ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly, https://arablit.org/2010/05/14/the-arabic-childrens-book-dilemma/.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the Arts Scholars faculty, specifically my project advisor Harold Burgess, as well as all my Arts peers and my workshop leader Anushka Tandon. Finally, thanks as well to my Arabic professors Ahmed Hanafy, Peter Glanville, and especially Samah Al-Salami and Lutf Alkebsi.