The Perspective of Two Cities: Comparing Afifa Karam and Sumayeh Attiyeh

The first Arabic-speakers in America debated issues of gender, empire, and assimilation in a global network of periodicals which distributed print materials across diasporic communities in the Middle East and the Americas. Women were not passive bystanders to these debates, sharing their opinions about women's labor and education, American assimilation, Arab nationalism, and more in both popular Arabic newspapers and women's magazines. Among them, Afifa Karam and Sumayeh Attiyeh earned fame in their respective communities by addressing the complex position of immigrant women. Karam spoke primarily to an Arabic-speaking audience, describing life in America, the freedoms women enjoyed, and the struggles of living as an immigrant in Arabic newspapers. In contrast, Attiyeh traveled across the United States giving lectures about the Middle East and published her writing in primarily English-language newspapers and magazines. Within the pages of Arabic and English language periodicals, Karam and Attiyeh engaged the imagined binary between East and West in their essays and fictions, each positioning themselves to talk to audiences both like and unlike them on behalf of the rights of not only Arab American women, but women everywhere.