Black-Arab political and cultural solidarity has had a long and rich history in the United States. That alliance is once again exerting a powerful influence on American society as Black American and Arab American activists and cultural workers are joining forces in formations like the Movement for Black Lives and Black for Palestine to address social justice issues. In Breaking Broken English, Hartman explores the historical and current manifestations of this relationship through language and literature, with a specific focus on Arab American literary works that use the English language creatively to put into practice many of the theories and ideas advanced by Black American thinkers.
Breaking Broken English shows how language is the location where literary and poetic beauty meet the political in creative work. Hartman draws out thematic connections between Arabs/Arab Americans and Black Americans around politics and culture and also highlights the many artistic ways these links are built. She shows how political and cultural ideas of solidarity are written in creative texts and emphasizes their potential to mobilize social justice activists in the United States and abroad in the ongoing struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

Michelle Hartman is a professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University and literary translator of fiction, based in Montreal. She has written extensively on women’s writing and the politics of language use and translation and literary solidarities. She is the translator of several works from Arabic, including Radwa Ashour’s memoir The Journey, Iman Humaydan’s novels Wild Mulberries and Other Lives, Jana Elhassan’s IPAF shortlisted novels The Ninety-Ninth Floor and All the Women Inside Me as well as Alexandra Chreiteh’s novels Always Coca Cola and Ali and His Russian Mother.

Michelle Hartman's profile page

• Winner, College Language Association Award for Creative Scholarship

Hartman’s thought-provoking analysis of a variety of work from poetry to short fiction to novels to memoir offer an understanding of how language and racial politics have impacted the way Arab American position themselves in American society.

Pauline Kaldas, Hollins University

Hartman deftly analyzes Arab American work with Black Studies as a critical lens, offering radical reading strategies that fundamentally shift how we understand Arab American letters. Breaking Broken English should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the field.

Therí Pickens, author of New Body Politics: Narrating Arab and Black Identity in the Contemporary United States

Michelle Hartman plumbs the polysemy of ‘breaking’ with rich analytical acuity, compelling us to read solidarity across a wide range of literary and linguistic practices.

Keith Feldman, University of California, Berkeley

Michele Hartman's Breaking Broken English... interrogates how Arab American literature is informed and shaped by Black literary production, with an emphasis on linguistic and aesthetic similarities.

Commonwealth Essays and Studies