Al' America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots
A travel-shaped cultural history that traces how Arab and Islamic influences remain embedded in American culture.
Work Information
It looks for Arab and Islamic traces hidden in the American landscape.
Tracing the Alamo, New Orleans’s French Quarter, and lineages in blues and rock, the book shows the back-and-forth between America and the Arab world. It examines layers of cultural contact through travel.
Review Summaries
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Its lightness and wide scope are appreciated, though readers disagree about how convincingly the cultural links are drawn.
Book Information
- Publisher
- The New Press
- Published
- 2008-12-02
- Pages
- 246 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.99 x 2.54 x 21.59 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781595583529
- ISBN-10
- 1595583521
- Price
- 8050 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Politics & Social Sciences/Social Sciences/Specific Demographics/Ethnic Studies
Four out of ten Americans say they dislike Muslims, according to a Gallup poll. "Muslims," a blogger wrote on the Web site Free Republic, "don't belong in America." In a lively, funny, and revealing riposte to these sentiments, journalist Jonathan Curiel offers a fascinating tour through the little-known Islamic past, and present, of American culture. From highbrow to pop, from lighthearted to profound, Al' America reveals the Islamic and Arab influences before our eyes, under our noses, and ringing in our ears. Curiel demonstrates that many of America's most celebrated places―including the Alamo in San Antonio, the French Quarter of New Orleans, and the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina―retain vestiges of Arab and Islamic culture. Likewise, some of America's most recognizable music―the Delta Blues, the surf sounds of Dick Dale, the rock and psychedelia of Jim Morrison and the Doors―is indebted to Arab music. And some of America's leading historical figures, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Elvis Presley, relied on Arab or Muslim culture for intellectual sustenance. Part travelogue, part cultural history, Al' America confirms a continuous pattern of give-and-take between America and the Arab Muslim world.
Jonathan Curiel is a journalist in San Francisco and the author of Al' America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots (The New Press). As a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle , he has had his journalism on Arabs and Muslims honored by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He has taught as a Fulbright scholar at Pakistan's Punjab University and researched the history of Islamic architecture as a Thomason Reuters Foundation Research Fellow at England's Oxford University. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Reviews
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Excelllent Book - A Must Read for every American!
This book should be taught in History and social studies classes in highschool and even college level! A lot of good information which covers a wide variety of subjects, from music to architecture and food - to show all the different types of influence that Islam and Muslims have had in America since the beginning of American history! A Must Read!
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An outstanding cultural bridge
Jonathan paints a beautiful cultural picture of the Arabic/Islamic influence on American culture. From the Coffee we drink that originated in Yemen, to the Ice-Cream cone invented by a Syrian, to the Islamic design of the Alamo, to the influence on the Blues and Rock and Roll music.... He proves the point that cultures are not a stand alone islands, where we give and take from each others. This book helps balance the views that focus on the bad side ignoring the goodness in them.
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Lovely
I like reading the book. It's amazing
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great insights in Al'America!
Having recently become interested in the Islamic world, Jonathan Curiel's "Al'America: Travels Through America's Arab & Islamic Roots" offers great insights in to so much that is and has been present in the US. The books is very well researched and written. I would read it again and again! Thank you for your work, Jonathan!
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Good Read!
My family and I found this book very interesting.