Diana abu jaber biography of williams
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The Goddess of Flowers
Washington Post, 7/11/
I answered the phone in my apartment and heard the sloping drawl of one of my students, Travis. "Miss Diana," he said, "Could you come on down the stairs a minute?"
It was early May on the Great Plains. The University of Nebraska had just let out for the summer, and there was an aroma of pasture and cow everywhere, even&#;when the wind was right&#;at the center of the city. I didn't want to be in Nebraska. I was 26 years old, and I wanted to be writing novels, not grading papers on detasseling corn. But I had just finished my first year of teaching, and I had no idea what to do next.
A year earlier, my boyfriend had married me fresh out of graduate school in New York, only to decide a week or two later to call it quits. He announced that he was moving to Paris with another woman and that inom could just go to Nebraska and teach freshman composition.
For months afterward, I felt like my skin had turned to dotted lines, everythi
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WILLIAMSTOWN -- Let's forget, for the moment, that this country is a melting pot, because it isn't. The heterogeneous stew of the s has been traded up for a more realistic cultural dish, and if it were up to author Diana Abu-Jaber, that dish might be include a healthy dollop of labneh, maybe some baklava, and olives, naturally.
Although Abu-Jaber is "American born," her heritage (like most Americans) reaches to the far corners of the globe, particularly to Jordan, her father's homeland. (Her mother is German-Irish.) The delightful result of this cultural mash is a collection of novels and stories that Abu-Jaber has fluidly put forth for the last 20 years.
She will read from her award-winning novel "Crescent" at Williams College on Tuesday at the ‘62 Center. While "Crescent" is a work of fiction -- and fairytale, and food, and love, and identity -- Abu-Jaber has always used her real life experiences as the rich roux of her work.
"The characters are inspired by my friends, my famil
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Diana Abu-Jaber - Life Without a Recipe
Wednesday April 27th at we have the great pleasure of presenting Diana Abu-Jaber for her latest book, Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir of Food and Family. Diana is one of my favorite authors, she has the gift of being able to create stories that focus on serious issues while also giving the reader memorable characters all told with wit and a dos of humor to entertain as well as enlighten. In her memoir she uses those gifts to tell the story of her family, paying homage to two of the people most influential in her life, her Jordanian father and her Southern grandmother. Both instilled a love of good stories and an appreciation for cooking. Anyone who enjoys cooking will relish the descriptions of young Diana with her Grandmother Grace baking pastry, or her Father cooking meals redolent of his Jordanian heritage. They each loved her fiercely, their passions fired through their different backgrounds and cultures