return to home
 
 
Member Login
Library Login
BookBrowse Mobile facebook      twitter      Bookmark and Share      mail to a friend  Email
 
  This Week's Recommendations    |     Hardcovers Coming Soon    |     Paperbacks Coming Soon    |     Recent Hardcovers    |     Recent Paperbacks
   Genres   |    Settings   |    Time Periods   |    Themes   |    Favorites   |    Award Winners   |    Book Finder   |    Surprise Me!   |    Tag cloud
   Recent Interviews    |     All Interviews    |     Author Bios    |     Author Websites    |     Pronunciation Guide
   Free Newsletters   |    Wordplay   |    Book Giveaway   |    BookBrowse Polls   |    Literary Quotes   |    Personality Quiz   |    Gift Membership
   Recent Membership Magazines    |     Magazine Archives     |     Invite the Author    |     My Reading List    |     First Impressions    |     My Account
   Editor's Blog    |     Best Reader Reviews    |     Book News    |     Meet the Reviewers    |     Stay In Touch
   About Us   |    Tour   |    Member Benefits   |    Join   |    Gift Memberships   |    Library Subscriptions   |    FAQ   |    People Say   |    Contact Us
PLA 2010
Search BookBrowse
Suggested Links
Books by this Author:
Origin (2007)
Crescent (2003)


Other Links:
Free Twice-Monthly Newsletters
The Girl Who Chased The Moon
Cheever

Win This Book!




The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Now a Major Motion Picture

Enter To Win Now!


wordplay
Solve this clue:
"T S I Willing B T F I W"

and be entered to win....
New Author
Interviews
Ingrid Law
Ingrid Law talks about the inspiration for Savvy
S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
John Hart
In a letter to his readers, John Hart talks about becoming a writer and the challenges he faced in writing The Last Child.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
No Stars
   Author Biography

Browse a biography and interview of Diana Abu-Jaber.
Plus: Book summary, excerpts and reviews at BookBrowse.com.

Diana Abu-Jaber
Diana Abu-Jaber Books by this author at BookBrowse:
Origin
Crescent

Read Interview

Link to Author's Website
Biography

Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of the novels Arabian Jazz and Crescent. Crescent was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award and was named one of the twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor. Arabian Jazz won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

She is also the author of a memoir, The Language of Baklava, and Origin (2007) the first in a new mystery series staring Lena, a highly gifted, intuitive fingerprint expert.

She teaches at Portland State University and divides her time between Portland and Miami.


In her own words .....
I grew up inside the shape of my father's stories. A Jordanian immigrant, Dad regaled us with tales about himself, his country, and his family that both entertained us and instructed us about the place he'd come from and the way he saw the world. These stories exerted a powerful influence on my imagination, in terms of what I chose to write about, the style of my language, and the form my own stories took.

People often ask me about my American mother, and whether she also told stories. Actually, my mother is not a native storyteller in the way my father is, but it may be that she has taught me something even more valuable, which is how to listen to stories. She made a space in our home for my father to invent himself, and her attentiveness and focus showed me that sometimes being quiet can be just as transformative as speaking.

I have two younger sisters and we grew up in little snow-bound houses in Syracuse, New York, and then spent some time living among courtyards and trellised jasmine and extended family in Amman, Jordan, before we all moved back to Syracuse again. My father could not make up his mind about which country we should live in. In America, he constantly reminded us that we were good Arab girls; we weren't allowed to go out to parties or school dances. But then he encouraged us to study singlemindedly, to compete as intensely as any boy, and to always make our own way in the world.

My father's brothers are doctors and scholars and politicians. And it was determined that I would receive my undergraduate degree from SUNY-Oswego because one of my uncles taught there and could keep an eye on me while I lived in a dormitory. When I finally struck out on my own to do my graduate work, I instinctively sought out mentors—the next best thing to uncles, in my mind—going for my M.A. at the University of Windsor, to study with Joyce Carol Oates, and then my Ph.D. from SUNY-Binghamton, to work with John Gardner.

In school, I started writing stories that I think shared a certain kinship with my father's stories in that they gave me a way to imagine myself in the world. After graduate school, I taught creative writing, film studies, and contemporary literature at a number of different universities, including the University of Nebraska, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and the University of Oregon. All of these places had something new to teach me about being an American. I moved around for work, but I think I also like to move. While there's a certain rootlessness and solitude to nomadism, I suppose that I am, as my father asserts, fundamentally a Bedouin. I am driven to exploration and conversation despite my best efforts to sit quietly in one place. I would just as happily host a dinner party as give a reading, and my chronically social nature frequently disrupts anything like a real work ethic.

Even in my work, I am restless—while I'm prone to write novels, I am also crazy about writing restaurant and film reviews, interviewing politicians and profiling county fairs, and fantasizing about writing a Great Arab-American Screenplay. My new idea is to live beside the ocean with my husband and my nervous little Italian greyhound, and to work outside under an umbrella with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of cookies. Once again, I will attempt to settle down and write for hours and hours at a time, the way I am told one must. But I suppose that I will end up, as usual, inviting friends or family over so I don't eat all the cookies myself. We will sit outside together, contemplating our origins and destinations, and begin telling each other stories again.
This biography was last updated on 07/05/2007.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 1,500 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date, inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors: If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new.

Become a Member
Advertisement
Editor's Choice
  •  Mar 20 
  •  Mar 18 
  •  Mar 16 
Making Toast
Roger Rosenblatt
Making Toast Jacket When his daughter, Amy, died suddenly of a heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and their three young grandchildren. His story tells how a family makes the possible out of the impossible.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand Jacket You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.
The Postmistress
Sarah Blake
The Postmistress Jacket The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during war­time, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Heresy
S.J. Parris
Heresy Jacket Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
The Swan Thieves
Elizabeth Kostova
The Swan Thieves Jacket Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
Wedlock
Recent Reader Reviews
Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien
I read this book in two days and found it so refreshing. Although you will learn a great deal about barn owls by reading it, the book is not just ... read more
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
I enjoyed reading this book, however, feel that this is not completely her own ideas. This books remembers me of a cross between 'ghost','Sixth ... read more
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ... read more
RSS RSS feed More...  
Most Viewed This Week
1. Brooklyn Bridge
Karen Hesse
2. Three Cups of Tea
David O. Relin, Greg Mortenson
3. The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
4. The Notebook
Nicholas Sparks
5. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
John Boyne
More...
Book Club Recommendations
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See
Paperback (Feb/10)
Lowboy
by John Wray
Paperback (Feb/10)
Honolulu
by Alan Brennert
Paperback (Feb/10)
When Will There Be Good News?
by Kate Atkinson
Paperback (Jan/10)
More...
First Impressions
Members read and review books often months before they're published. See what they think in First Impressions!
Secret Daughter
by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
by Heidi W. Durrow
4.5 Stars            (Feb/10)
The Queen's Lover
by Vanora Bennett
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
Arcadia Falls
by Carol Goodman
Four Stars            (Mar/10)
The Journal Keeper
by Phyllis Theroux
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
Still Life
by Melissa Milgrom
3.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
More...
   Most Recent Blog Entries
Author as Advocate
The Story Behind "The Forty Rules of Love" by Elif Shafak
A Warm Welcome to Major Pettigrew
How Becoming Published Changed My Life (in ways I did not expect)
rss  RSS   rss  subscribe
  Latest BookBrowse News
Amazon 'buy button' rumors abound (Mar 18 2010)
Rumors swirled today that Amazon could revoke the buy buttons for books by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Hachette if the major publishers can't... Full Story
Amazon's e-pricing threats (Mar 18 2010)
With Apple's iPad launch just weeks away, Amazon raised the stakes again when it threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online... Full Story
rss RSS feed More...
BookBrowse Poll
Q: Did your parents/caregivers read to you regularly as a child? If so, how old were you when they stopped?
Younger than 5 years old
Around 5-7 years old
8-10 years old
11-13 years old
14 years or older
They never or rarely read to me
I don't remember
HOME Submissions | Advertising | Showcase | Library Subscriptions | Media Inquiries | Reviewers | Contact Us |   Email this page to a friend
addall.com - external link
Visit AddAll.com to compare and save at 41 bookstores!
Searching for used books? Search 20,000+ dealers!
 
Compare music prices  |  Compare movie prices
One Percent