Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales Review

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Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales ReviewPlease read this book. Strange to begin a review with an appeal. Here's why: There is great tension between the Arab-Muslim world and others, and this book offers insights other books won't offer you. The authors are themselves Arabs and scholars from the Middle East. The book's 48-page introduction offers a detailed peek into traditional, Muslim, Arab, peasant culture. The folktales in the anthology are delightful. They could be enjoyed by children and savored by adults. There are lighthearted humor, adventure, deep morals, glittering rewards, and, again, insights into Muslim life. If you liked Cinderella, in any of her retellings - and who doesn't like Cinderella - you'll love these tales.
The Politically Correct Thought Police insist that any criticism of Islam must be condemned as that highly suspect, all too convenient neologism, "Islamophobia." The Politically Correct Thought Police are fully of baloney, and resistance to them is highest virtue. I am Spartacus, and you are, too.
Of course you can critique Islam and still not hate Muslims, indeed can like and even love Muslims. How do I know? Many of my most beloved family members were not only Communist Party members, they were local leaders in the CP in (the then so named) Czechoslovakia. I criticized Communism. I marched in anti-Soviet demonstrations. And I loved my Communist relatives. They criticized my belief systems: capitalism, Western Democracy, Catholicism. And they loved me. Yes, you can critique a person's, or a polity's, belief system, and still like, love, or be peacefully indifferent to those who adhere to that belief system.
In any case, yes, you should read Robert Spencer to understand what the mainstream press is not telling you about Islam. But you should also read this book to cultivate a genuine love of the aspirations, honor, complexity and full humanity of traditional, Muslim, Arab culture.
Understanding its treatment of women is central to understanding Islam, and Muhawi and Kanaana offer deep and unapologetic insight into Islam's treatment of women.
As the late, great folklore scholar Alan Dundes demonstrated, folklore reveals the suppressed desires of those who disseminate it. In Arab folktales, Muslim women reveal how they really feel about polygyny, the practice of one man taking more than one wife. Polygyny, the authors state, "more than any other institution or practice, represents the power of men over women" (14). Women are not happy with it, and in folktales told by women, polygynist husbands pay a price for their lack of fidelity to one wife. "In none of the tales is polygyny presented in a good light" (14). Muslim women reveal how they feel about the favoritism bestowed on male children. In the tales told by women, in contrast to real life, families celebrate the birth of daughters (18). In the tales, female characters reveal an intelligence, an adventurousness, an ability to solve problems, denied them in real life. As the authors put it: "The tales empower the women who narrate them to traverse, in their speech, the bounds of social convention" (12).
In the tales, as opposed to real life, women are active and men are passive (18, 36). In the tales, in contrast to real life, women pursue romantic and sexual encounters, choose their own husbands, and experience and value romance, rather than just submitting to sex as part of marital obedience and a way to increase the number of people in a clan, thus increasing its power (27, 32, 34). In the tales, women take lovers, and behave "permissively and playfully" with them (35). In spite of the strictures that Islam imposes on women's freedom of movement, in the tales, women undertake journeys (31).
The authors identify women as "the other" in Muslim, Arab culture (14). Important social bonds are between men. Women's outsider status is marked by their never taking their husband's names. They are not, strictly speaking, part of the very households in which they live. "At no time in her life is a woman considered to live in her own space ... [women] are considered strangers" in their own homes (17). The patriarch's control of "his" females is so all pervasive that "mother's milk belongs not to her but to her husband" (37).
The authors' helpful comments also emphasize the importance in Muslim, Arab culture on the collective as the basis of society, not the individual, and the emphasis on fate: "Each person's fortune is written on the forehead at the moment of birth" (44).
The tales are, simply, wonderful. The heroes are clever - one sits between thorn bushes and under a dripping bag of water to keep from falling asleep - the ghouls and genies are scary, and the treasures are worth all the adventure it took to gain them. The total enjoyment a non-Muslim, non-Arab reader can gain from these tales is testimony to our common humanity.Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales OverviewWere it simply a collection of fascinating, previously unpublished folktales, Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales would merit praise and attention because of its cultural rather than political approach to Palestinian studies. But it is much more than this. By combining their respective expertise in English literature and anthropology, Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana bring to these tales an integral method of study that unites a sensitivity to language with a deep appreciation for culture.As native Palestinians, the authors are well-suited to their task. Over the course of several years they collected tales in the regions of the Galilee, Gaza, and the West Bank, determining which were the most widely known and appreciated and selecting the ones that best represented the Palestinian Arab folk narrative tradition. Great care has been taken with the translations to maintain the original flavor, humor, and cultural nuances of tales that are at once earthy and whimsical. The authors have also provided footnotes, an international typology, a comprehensive motif index, and a thorough analytic guide to parallel tales in the larger Arab tradition in folk narrative. Speak, Bird, Speak Again is an essential guide to Palestinian culture and a must for those who want to deepen their understanding of a troubled, enduring people.

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