Dearborn: Ghassan Zeineddine's mini-encyclopaedia of Arab-American life in the US

In a few words, the book Dearborn (2023, Tin House, US) can be described as a mini-encyclopaedia about how Arab Americans live in the US.

There is pain, suffering, love, history, politics and geography, all felt and told by fictional characters living in this unique town next to Detroit, Michigan.  

There the book sets its scenography for “The Actors of Dearborn”, where a middle-aged man named Samir becomes Uncle Sam, especially after 9/11 and begins decorating his house with patriotic symbols to improve his “Americaness.”

There is Yasser, a butcher, who becomes Yusra on Friday mornings, finding excuses to drive away from his family to change identity, dressing in a sleeveless robe for plus-sized women, lipstick, mascara, clip-on earrings and a hijab.

Zizou, a night watchman and aspiring writer, doesn’t know much else than wanting to please his mother who wants to see his face on the billboards across Dearborn, like his brother, a successful estate agent. But eventually, his voice will turn him famous with an odd idea that may be considered blasphemy for some, but brilliant for others.  

Ghassan Zeineddine's stories humorously explore the "unique case" of Dearborn, "the only place in the US where I feel I belong,” he tells The New Arab. 

With around 100,000 residents, more than half of whom are of Arab descent, Dearborn is considered the "capital of Arab America."

Migration began in the late 19th century due to famine and the search for opportunities, further increasing when Ford started to offer $5 a day to workers.

"Political instability in the Middle East, including major conflicts like the 1948 Nakba, 1967 war, Lebanese, Yemeni and Syria civil wars, and others, has driven further immigration to Dearborn,” explains Ghassan, whose Lebanese family moved to the US because of the civil war.

Although Ghassan was born in Washington D.C., he grew up in Saudi Arabia but later moved back to the US in 1990.

Today, Ghassan works as an assistant professor of creative writing at the Oberlin College (Ohio). The co-author of the anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging, felt he had to give something back to Dearborn, the “city that reminded me of the Arab world.”

Filled with businesses run by Arab-Americans of multiple nationalities – the Lebanese are the vast majority, but Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians and Yemenis follow – and cultures – with Druzes, Christians and Muslims of different confessions – Dearborn is home to complexities of various kinds.

And it’s this multitude of identities that inspired Ghassan for the book.

“The continuous surveillance of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency) and FBI agents,” a recurrent theme across the book’s stories, “is a daily reality for brown and Arab-American people in Dearborn,” Ghassan tells The New Arab. 

He also tries to reflect on gender and sexuality dynamics, between tradition, repression and cultural ‘shocks’. Such examples are in Yusra, but also in Speedoman, a story in which the reader can appreciate at best Ghassan’s creative skills by moving back and forth between two collectively different points of view, five husbands and five wives, reacting to the same events but from two completely diverse microcosms.

The author also adds significant elements of history and geography into this creative work, thanks to Ghassan’s relations with Lebanon and his important research work. 

We see this in the story Marseille, where Madame Ayda retraces her journey from a small Druze village in Metn, Mount Lebanon – the same area in Lebanon where Ghassan’s family are from – to the US via the Titanic, which she survived.

The common thread of these stories is indeed the city, representing the strong connection between its inhabitants and the Arab world but at the same time the every day ‘love and hate’ relation with their host country.

The US has welcomed generations of Arabs while remaining the superpower behind the civil and political strife in the Middle East.

More than ever, this has been visible in the past 11 months, with Israel’s brutal war on Palestine deeply impacting Arab-American citizens in Dearborn, as in the rest of the country.

Reminding us that the Uncommitted Movement, a protest campaign aimed to pressure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza war and an arms embargo on Israel, originated in Dearborn, Ghassan highlights the positive way the city reacted.

"Dearborn became not only a place of strong public, organised and spontaneous solidarity towards Palestine, but also of active resistance against Israel’s war on Palestinians," the author tells The New Arab.

Activism for Palestine is very dear to Ghassan himself, as he decided to withdraw from the PEN America’s literature awards, because “this organisation, meant to promote freedom of speech, barely made a stance about the journalists, writers and artists killed by Israel in the past 11 months, as well the Palestinian and Arab voices suppressed in the US," he explains. 

"I just felt I could not align with them anymore,” Ghassan reveals. 

Such a strong stance is not new to Ghassan as a writer, who believes that “you can’t just resist injustice on the page.”

With his book, the winner of the 2023 Khayrallah Book Prize, among other important recognitions, Ghassan hopes to humanise people, especially in the US, who still face anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment.

"I wish that through my book people will understand that Arab-Americans, like everyone else, just have the same feelings, anxieties and joys.”  

Stefano Nanni is an Italian freelance journalist with a background in the aid sector