Afifa Karam
Afifa Karam was a Lebanese-American journalist, novelist, and translator. A writer for the New York City-based Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Hoda, Karam authored three original Arabic novels as well as a number of Arabic translations of novels from English and French. She was an advocate for women's rights in the Mahjar, or Arab diaspora, and of Arab Feminism.
Early life
Afifa Karam was born in Amsheet, then in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, to Yusuf Salih Karam and Frusina Habib Sharbel. Her family were wealthy Maronites, and her father Yusuf was a doctor in the Ottoman army. Karam was educated in local missionary schools until the untimely and unexpected death of her father when she was thirteen. Subsequently, she was married to her cousin, Karam Hanna Salih Karam, who had emigrated to the United States six years prior. In 1897 she and her husband moved to the United States and settled in Shreveport, Louisiana.Journalism
Karam continued to study Arabic language and literature. In 1903, at the age of twenty, she began to submit her writing to the New York City-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hoda. Its editor-in-chief, Naoum Mokarzel, provided her with Arabic literary texts to read and he personally critiqued her writing. In 1911, he put her in charge of the paper for six months while he was out of the country. That same year, Karam founded The New World: A Ladies Monthly Arabic Magazine which gave way two years later to a second publication, Syrian Woman, founded by Karam in 1913.Novels
At the age of 23, Karam made her literary debut in Al-Hoda. She took a six-month hiatus from her journalistic work to devote her efforts to the writing of her first novel, Badi'a and Fu'ad, published in 1906 by Al-Hoda Press. Her second and third novels, Fatima the Bedouin and The Girl of 'Amshit were also published by Al-Hoda over the next several years. Karam's three original novels all appeared before the 1914 publication of Zaynab by the Egyptian author Mohammed Hussein Heikal, which is widely considered to be the "first Arabic novel" by the accepted canon of Arabic literature.Literary innovation
As a first generation immigrant writer, Karam's literature questioned and negotiated between inherited Arab and American values, and promoted the social emancipation and education of Levantine-American immigrants, particularly the women among them. She criticized restrictive gender roles and practices that she deemed oppressive to women. Karam's stories show man as oppressor and woman as oppressed, and condemn the governmental and religious institutions that uphold such unjust practices in Lebanon.Karam's novels did not circulate widely in the Arab world. None of her novels was republished until the centennial republication of her first novel Badī'a wa Fu'ād by Sa'īd Yaqṭīn. Nonetheless, Karam's novels are some of the earliest Arabic literary texts written in that form.