Dreams Deferred, Translated: Radwa Ashour and Langston Hughes
Abstract This article uses the project of translating into English Radwa Ashour’s memoir, The Journey: An Egyptian Woman Student’s Memoirs in America [Al-Rihla Ayyam Talibah Misriyah fi Amrika], to explore a number of crucial questions in Arabic-English translation. It works through the ways in which the literary elements of the text—its poetics and poetic expression—are translated between the two languages, in relation to and in conversation with its social and political elements. The specific example used is Ashour’s inclusion of her own translation of Langston Hughes’s now iconic poem «Harlem (2)» (better known as «A Dream Deferred») in the original text. The article explores how Ashour presents this poem to her Arabic readership, as a representative of Black American poetry. This article’s primary intervention is to analyze and formulate suggestions for translating a text that is explicitly political and highly poetic.
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Ashur, Radwa. 1983. Al-Rihla: Ayyam taliba misriyya fi Amrika. Beirut: al-Adab.
Ashour, Radwa. 2016. «Chapter One: The Journey: An Egyptian Woman Student’s Memoir in America». Translated by Michelle Hartman. Journal of Comparative American Studies. Forthcoming.
Hughes, Langston. 1951. «Harlem (2)». In Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Vol. 3: The Poems 1951–1967, ed. by Arnold Rampersad. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Hughes, Langston. 2009. Ana aydan ughani Amrika. [orig. The Journey: An Egyptian Woman Student’s Memoirs in America]. Translated by Samer Abu Hawwash. Freiberg: Kamel, 2009.
Abdo, Diya M. 2009. «Textual Migration: Self-Translation and Translation of the Self in Leila Abouzeid’s Return to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan Woman and Ruju‘ ila al-Tufulah». Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 30 (2): 1-42.
Abdo, Diya M. 2010. «Chameleonic Text: Peritextual Transformation in Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass and Nisa’ ‘Ala Ajnihat Al-hilm». Life Writing 7 (2): 175-194.
Ahmari, Sohrab and Nasser Weddady, eds. 2012. Arab Spring Dreams: The Next Generation Speaks Out for Freedom and Justice from North Africa to Iran. New York: Palgrave McMillan.
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.hamsaweb.org/essay/
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.aicongress.org/2014-dream-deferred-winners/
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.aicongress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/AIC-2010-Annual-Report.pdf
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.aicongress.org/2013/10/aic-announces-the-struggle-for-individual-rights-in-the-middle-east-8th-annual-dream-deferred-essay-contest/.
Amireh, Amal. 2000. «Framing Nawal El Saadawi: Arab Feminism in a Transnational World». Signs 26 (1): 215-249.
Bay Area Art Queers Unleashing Power. «#8 Dreams Deferred», 5 March 2013. Accessed September 30, 2015. https://baqup.wordpress.com/tag/langston-hughes/.
Ashour, Radwa. 2000. «Eyewitness, Scribe and Storyteller: My Experience as a Novelist». The Massachusetts Review 41 (1): 85-92, esp. p. 90.
Ashour, Radwa. 1994. «My Experience with Writing». Translated by Rebecca Porteus. In The View From Within: Writers and Critics on Contemporary Arabic Literature, ed. by Ferial Ghazoul and Barbara Harlow. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 27-33.
Blumenthal, Max. 2013. «Weddady’s Free Arabs, the American Islamic Congress and pro-Israel Funders who Helped them Rise», Electronic Intifada, 7 May. Accessed September 30, 2015. https://electronicintifada.net/content/weddadys-free-arabs-american-islamic-congress-and-pro-israel-funders-who-helped-them-rise.
Source Watch. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/DonorsTrust_and_Donors_Capital_Fund_Grant_Recipients.
Booth, Marilyn. 2008. «Translator v. author (2007) Girls of Riyadh go to New York». Translation Studies 1 (2): 197-211.
Boullata, Issa J. 2003. «The Case for Resistant Translation from Arabic to English». Translation Review 65 (1): 29-33.
DeYoung, Terri. 2000. «TS Eliot and modern Arabic literature». The Year Book of Comparative and General Literature, 3-21.
Dworkin, Ira. 2012. «“Near the Congo”: Langston Hughes and the Geopolitics of Internationalist Poetry». American Literary History 24 (4): 631-657.
Gohar, Saddik. 2007. «The Protest Poetry of Muhamad al-Fayturi and Langston Hughes». Majalla: Studies in Islam & the Middle East 4 (1): 1-11.
Gohar, Saddik. 2008a. «The dialectics of homeland and identity: Reconstructing Africa in the poetry of Langston Hughes and Mohamed Al-Fayturi». Tydskrif vir letterkunde 45 (1): 42-74.
Gohar, Saddik. 2008b. «Subverting the History of Slavery and Colonization in the Poetry of M. Al-Fayturi and Langston Hughes». The Western Journal of Black Studies 32 (1): 16-29.
Hartman, Michelle. 2004. «“Besotted with the Bright Lights of Imperialism”:? Arab Subjectivity Constructed Against New York’s Many Faces». Journal of Arabic Literature 35 (3): 270-328.
Hartman, Michelle. 2005. «Writing Arabs and Africa (ns) in America: Adonis and Radwa Ashour from Harlem to Lady Liberty». International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (3): 397-420.
Hartman, Michelle. 2012. «Gender, genre, and the (missing) gazelle: Arab women writers and the politics of translation». Feminist Studies 38 (1): 17-49.
Hartman, Michelle. 2015. «My Tale’s Too Long to Tell: The Locust and the Bird between South Lebanon and New York City». Journal of Arabic Literature 46 (2): 1-25.
Jabra, Jabra Ibrahim. 1971. «Modern Arabic literature and the West». Journal of Arabic Literature 2 (1): 76-91.
Kahf, Mohja. 2000. «Packaging “Huda”: Sha’rawi’s memoirs in the United States reception environment». In Going global: The transnational reception of Third World women writers, ed. Amal Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj. New York/London: Garland, 72-94.
Kernan, Ryan James. 2007. Lost and found in black translation: Langston Hughes’s translations of French- and Spanish-language poetry, his Hispanic and Francophone translators, and the fashioning of radical black subjectivities. PhD dissertation. UCLA.
Kutzinski, Vera M. 2013. The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Pickens, Therí. 2014. New Body Politics: Narrating Arab and Black Identity in the Contemporary United States. New York: Routledge.
Samarrai, Ghanim. 2014. «Rejuvenating TS Eliot’s The Waste Land». Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 41 (2): 112-125.
al-Shamma, Tarek. 2009. Translation and the Manipulation of Difference: Arabic Literature in Nineteenth-Century England. Manchester, UK: St Jerome.
Tymoczko, Maria, ed. 2010. Translation, Resistance, Activism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Ashour, Radwa. 2016. «Chapter One: The Journey: An Egyptian Woman Student’s Memoir in America». Translated by Michelle Hartman. Journal of Comparative American Studies. Forthcoming.
Hughes, Langston. 1951. «Harlem (2)». In Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Vol. 3: The Poems 1951–1967, ed. by Arnold Rampersad. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Hughes, Langston. 2009. Ana aydan ughani Amrika. [orig. The Journey: An Egyptian Woman Student’s Memoirs in America]. Translated by Samer Abu Hawwash. Freiberg: Kamel, 2009.
Abdo, Diya M. 2009. «Textual Migration: Self-Translation and Translation of the Self in Leila Abouzeid’s Return to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan Woman and Ruju‘ ila al-Tufulah». Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 30 (2): 1-42.
Abdo, Diya M. 2010. «Chameleonic Text: Peritextual Transformation in Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass and Nisa’ ‘Ala Ajnihat Al-hilm». Life Writing 7 (2): 175-194.
Ahmari, Sohrab and Nasser Weddady, eds. 2012. Arab Spring Dreams: The Next Generation Speaks Out for Freedom and Justice from North Africa to Iran. New York: Palgrave McMillan.
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.hamsaweb.org/essay/
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.aicongress.org/2014-dream-deferred-winners/
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.aicongress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/AIC-2010-Annual-Report.pdf
American Islamic Congress. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.aicongress.org/2013/10/aic-announces-the-struggle-for-individual-rights-in-the-middle-east-8th-annual-dream-deferred-essay-contest/.
Amireh, Amal. 2000. «Framing Nawal El Saadawi: Arab Feminism in a Transnational World». Signs 26 (1): 215-249.
Bay Area Art Queers Unleashing Power. «#8 Dreams Deferred», 5 March 2013. Accessed September 30, 2015. https://baqup.wordpress.com/tag/langston-hughes/.
Ashour, Radwa. 2000. «Eyewitness, Scribe and Storyteller: My Experience as a Novelist». The Massachusetts Review 41 (1): 85-92, esp. p. 90.
Ashour, Radwa. 1994. «My Experience with Writing». Translated by Rebecca Porteus. In The View From Within: Writers and Critics on Contemporary Arabic Literature, ed. by Ferial Ghazoul and Barbara Harlow. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 27-33.
Blumenthal, Max. 2013. «Weddady’s Free Arabs, the American Islamic Congress and pro-Israel Funders who Helped them Rise», Electronic Intifada, 7 May. Accessed September 30, 2015. https://electronicintifada.net/content/weddadys-free-arabs-american-islamic-congress-and-pro-israel-funders-who-helped-them-rise.
Source Watch. Accessed September 30, 2015. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/DonorsTrust_and_Donors_Capital_Fund_Grant_Recipients.
Booth, Marilyn. 2008. «Translator v. author (2007) Girls of Riyadh go to New York». Translation Studies 1 (2): 197-211.
Boullata, Issa J. 2003. «The Case for Resistant Translation from Arabic to English». Translation Review 65 (1): 29-33.
DeYoung, Terri. 2000. «TS Eliot and modern Arabic literature». The Year Book of Comparative and General Literature, 3-21.
Dworkin, Ira. 2012. «“Near the Congo”: Langston Hughes and the Geopolitics of Internationalist Poetry». American Literary History 24 (4): 631-657.
Gohar, Saddik. 2007. «The Protest Poetry of Muhamad al-Fayturi and Langston Hughes». Majalla: Studies in Islam & the Middle East 4 (1): 1-11.
Gohar, Saddik. 2008a. «The dialectics of homeland and identity: Reconstructing Africa in the poetry of Langston Hughes and Mohamed Al-Fayturi». Tydskrif vir letterkunde 45 (1): 42-74.
Gohar, Saddik. 2008b. «Subverting the History of Slavery and Colonization in the Poetry of M. Al-Fayturi and Langston Hughes». The Western Journal of Black Studies 32 (1): 16-29.
Hartman, Michelle. 2004. «“Besotted with the Bright Lights of Imperialism”:? Arab Subjectivity Constructed Against New York’s Many Faces». Journal of Arabic Literature 35 (3): 270-328.
Hartman, Michelle. 2005. «Writing Arabs and Africa (ns) in America: Adonis and Radwa Ashour from Harlem to Lady Liberty». International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (3): 397-420.
Hartman, Michelle. 2012. «Gender, genre, and the (missing) gazelle: Arab women writers and the politics of translation». Feminist Studies 38 (1): 17-49.
Hartman, Michelle. 2015. «My Tale’s Too Long to Tell: The Locust and the Bird between South Lebanon and New York City». Journal of Arabic Literature 46 (2): 1-25.
Jabra, Jabra Ibrahim. 1971. «Modern Arabic literature and the West». Journal of Arabic Literature 2 (1): 76-91.
Kahf, Mohja. 2000. «Packaging “Huda”: Sha’rawi’s memoirs in the United States reception environment». In Going global: The transnational reception of Third World women writers, ed. Amal Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj. New York/London: Garland, 72-94.
Kernan, Ryan James. 2007. Lost and found in black translation: Langston Hughes’s translations of French- and Spanish-language poetry, his Hispanic and Francophone translators, and the fashioning of radical black subjectivities. PhD dissertation. UCLA.
Kutzinski, Vera M. 2013. The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Pickens, Therí. 2014. New Body Politics: Narrating Arab and Black Identity in the Contemporary United States. New York: Routledge.
Samarrai, Ghanim. 2014. «Rejuvenating TS Eliot’s The Waste Land». Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 41 (2): 112-125.
al-Shamma, Tarek. 2009. Translation and the Manipulation of Difference: Arabic Literature in Nineteenth-Century England. Manchester, UK: St Jerome.
Tymoczko, Maria, ed. 2010. Translation, Resistance, Activism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Hartman, M. (2016). Dreams Deferred, Translated: Radwa Ashour and Langston Hughes. CLINA Revista Interdisciplinaria De Traducción Interpretación Y Comunicación Intercultural, 2(1), 61–76. Retrieved from https://revistas.usal.es/dos/index.php/clina/article/view/14554
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