![]() ![]() But when she moved to Nadia's Café, she went through her parents' old recipes and began cooking the favorite - but almost forgotten - dishes of her childhood. Sirine learned how to cook professionally working as a line cook and then a sous chef in the kitchens of French, Italian, and "Californian" restaurants. I would rather feed someone, because I do feel that you can't help but have a kind of insight that comes, not only intellectually, but also emotionally and physically, from that experience of breaking bread together."īelow is an excerpt from the first chapter of Crescent. ![]() "I could speak whole paragraphs about the Middle East, but I'd rather give somebody a shish-kabob. "I do believe that food is one of the most immediate and most convincing ways of explaining cultural experience to another person, " she tells Montagne. ![]() Abu-Jaber suffuses Crescent with dishes and aromas from the Middle East. One of those inspirations is clearly food. NPR's Renee Montagne speaks with Abu-Jaber about her novel and its inspirations. Set against the backdrop of a Los Angeles community of Iranian and Iraqi immigrants and exiles, the story is about an Iraqi-American woman, Sirine, who falls in love with Hanif, an Iraqi exile. ![]() Diana Abu-Jaber currently teaches at Portland State University's Department of English.ĭiana Abu-Jaber's new book, Crescent, combines romance, folk tales and current events to illustrate the Arab-American immigrant experience. ![]()
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