My Mother’s Table: At Home in the Maronite Diaspora, A Study of Emigration from Hadchit, North Lebanon to Australia and America by Nelia Hyndman-Rizk (review)

Mashriq & Mahjar 3, no. 1 (2015), 161–165 ISSN 2169-4435 NELIA HYNDMAN-RIZK, My Mother’s Table: At Home in the Maronite Diaspora, A Study of Emigration from Hadchit, North Lebanon to Australia and America (New Castle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). Pp. 315. $59.34 cloth. ISBN 9781443829489. REVIEWED BY AMY E. ROWE, Independent Scholar, London, UK; email: amy_rowe@post.harvard.edu This anthropological study of Maronite Christian emigrants from the village of Hadchit in North Lebanon is primarily concerned with the nuanced ways in which the migrants and their descendants in Australia understand “home.” Hyndman-Rizk argues that through women’s practices of care, acutely symbolized when gathered around the mother’s table, emigrants establish a sense of homeliness that was previously fixated on a specific place: the land and infrastructure of Hadchit. This is a familiar process from many studies of migration. In order to understand how the migrants have established this new homeliness the author investigated: (i) how these people understand their (or their ancestors’) decisions to migrate with the aim of achieving najāḥ (success) by acquiring material wealth; (ii) the religious ramifications of such decisions, i.e. becoming “spiritually poor” by focusing on wealth; (iii) discourse about Hadchit as both a “holy land” and as a site of return; (iv) identity politics in Australia and the US and how Hadchitis operate within these broader multicultural settings. The centrality of Hadchiti identity is perhaps the most striking aspect of this ethnography as compared with other studies of Lebanese diasporas. The author’s fieldwork was conducted exclusively with people in Australia and the US who have origins in the village of Hadchit. Hadchit emerges as the primary identification point with Lebanese, Maronite, Christian, Australian, Lebanese-Australian, or Lebanese-American as facets of their status as Hadchiti. On the one hand this provides a tight focus and reflects the importance of a very specific orientation to place and to lineage; this is often lost in ethnographic literature that tends to use Lebanese-Australian, Mashriq & Mahjar 3, no. 1 (2015) 162 Christian Lebanese, etc. as the analytic framework. On the other, sometimes the village focus gives perhaps too narrow a focus to the ethnography. It would be useful to have more ethnographic material provided to see how they navigate the different scales of identification but seem to keep their Hadchit-ness as central (or at least as a vital aspect of identity). Also, given intermarriage with Lebanese from other villages and indeed with non-Lebanese, it would be useful to understand how the primacy of Hadchiti identity—as opposed to other potential configurations—is maintained. At the end of Chapter 6 the author explains that most Hadchitis today identify as LebaneseAustralian (in the Hadchit Household Survey) and why this hyphenated identity “best captures their dual positioning as being both Australian and Lebanese and, yet, distinctively different from both” (230). This is revealed only toward the end of the ethnography and the text would benefit overall from clarification, as much of the rest of the book appears to hinge on the centrality of Hadchiti identity for her interviewees. The chapter “Return to Hadchit” stands out as one of the richest and most nuanced. The text is at its best when examining points of contact between villagers in Hadchit today and those from the diaspora returning to visit. The ethnographic material and accompanying analysis bring to light competing expectations of behavior from both sides. The study is primarily one about the migrants but also demonstrates how the migration process (or indeed capitalist modernity generally) has transformed the village of Hadchit and the social lives of those who remained in Lebanon. Sydney Hadchitis often have a vision of what Hadchit was forty years ago and expect it to be more or less unchanged; they are often startled by social changes like less frequent church attendance and young women having more freedom than those living in Sydney. Also challenging is the pressure to display their “success” in Australia through boasting about and demonstrating achievements of material wealth. There is some concern that migration may not have made some families better off in the long run. There is a great deal of discussion...