Ammiel Alcalay – författare

By exposing the rich and diverse textual and cultural legacy of this time and space, Alcalay reassesses the exclusion of Semitic culture in Europe from the perspective of contemporary Arabic culture and opposing images of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This book will compel a revision of Jewish studies by placing contemporary Israeli culture within its Middle Eastern context and the terms of colonial, postcolonial, and multicultural discourse.

Voted one of the Top 25 Books of 1999 by the Village Voice. As a poet, translator, critic, and scholar, Ammiel Alcalay has written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Republic, and Middle east Report, as well as for such literary journals as Grand Street, Conjunctions, and Paper Air. In Memories of Our Future, the unique intellectual and political path forged by Alcalay over the past fifteen years has now been collected in one volume. In a mix of personal narrative, political commentary, and literary criticism, Alcalay surveys diverse subjects, among them Mediterranean culture, Arabic literature, the destruction of Carthage, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the war in Bosnia. "In the truest sense, the essays in Memories of Our Future bear witness to events and ideas that shape the world. Poet, translator, scholar, Ammiel Alcalay brings to any subject an acute sensitivity to writing and a sophisticated understanding of the way politics works to produce and maintain literature. Whether thinking about diaspora, memory, modernism, sacred texts, or Juan Goytisolo, he attends to voices that are excluded or silenced.Ammiel Alcalay is a unique and important figure in contemporary world literature." --Lynne Tillman, author of No Lease On Life "Few contemporary intellectuals can boast of as diverse a range of skills and talents as Ammiel Alcalay. His work is cosmopolitan in the best sense: in an epoch of superficial globalism his approach to the cultures he deals with is always rigorous, always meticulously respectful of particularities and differences. Unlike many contemporary literary theoreticians, he is also profoundly alive to the social and political realities that shape cultural production. There is no one better qualified to explore the meaning of today's 'culture wars', locally and globally." --Amitav Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace "An outstanding anthology of essays surveying the complexities of Mediterranean cultures; the diverse, changing space of the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa--areas of diasporas, dislocations, and genocidal exterminations provoked by nationalism and religious fanaticism. Of special interest are his observations and analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian confrontation, Arab/Jewish poetics, and Jewish identity in America."--Midwest Book Review Ammiel Alcalay is poet, translator, critic, and scholar who teaches at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of, among other books, After Jews and Arabs (1993); The Cairo Notebooks (1993); Memories of Our Future (1999); From the Warring Factions (2002); Scrapmetal (2007), and A Little History (2010). He was one of the initiators of the Poetry Is News Coalition, and helped to organize the Olson Now project. He launched Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, a publishing venture whose mission is to retrieve and make available key texts falling widely under the rubric of the New American Poetry.

Enigmatic and multi-layered, Islanders is about finding one's own hard-won truth. A young man's indelible memories of the struggle to find intimacy-formative experiences like the ebb and flow of friendships, love, and ordinary workaday life-are viewed through a lens of nostalgic longing and hard-eyed realism as he attempts to come to terms with the past. Set during the cataclysm of the last years of the war in Vietnam, in a landscape that shifts between the bleak fishing towns of the Atlantic coast to the ruined cities of the Northeast, Islanders explores the classic theme of identity's intricate relationship to place.

The long awaited 2nd edition of from the warring factions brings back into print Ammiel Alcalay’s book-length poem dedicated to the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, site of the massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995. This daring blend of lyric and document remaps the world we inherit, from native New England to the Roman Empire, from the Gulf War to Palestine and the Balkans. The late Adrienne Rich has called from the warring factions the “kind of poem I’ve been waiting to read.” And in her new introduction, Diane di Prima writes “This book forced me to redefine my life.” Accompanied by an extensive discussion between Alcalay and poet Benjamin Hollander, as well as a new preface by the author, this edition brings an essential text of the post-9/11 world back into the conversation.

Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the war in Iraq, and 9/11, 'A Little History' explores the deep politics of memory and imagination while proposing a new paradigm for American Studies. With preface by editor Fred Dewey, Alcalay’s book places the work of major figures like Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Olson, Edward Dorn, Diane di Prima, and Amiri Baraka, in the realm of resistance and global decolonization to assert the power of poetry as a unique form of knowledge. Recognized by Edward Said as “that rare thing, a gifted prose writer and poet, and an accomplished intellectual,” Alcalay brings his blend of autobiographical and investigative scholarship to bear on this timely and important book of essays.