Afifa Karam
#WomensHistoryMonth
Afifah Karam (1883–1924) was the first Lebanese-American female journalist and writer — she also published feminist novels ahead of her time.
Afifah Karam was born on 22 July 1883 in Amchit, Mount Lebanon, into a wealthy Maronite family.
She was educated in local missionary schools until the age of 13, when she was married off to a relative, John Karam. In 1897 she and her husband moved to the United States and settled in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Because her husband was wealthy, she didn’t have to work and spent much of her time educating herself and reading books. She also discovered Arabic writings published in Al-Hoda, a New York City-based Arabic-language newspaper. Al-Hoda’s founder, Naoum Mokarzel, met Afifa Karam during one of his visits to Shreveport, soon after her arrival to the city.
Mokarzel and Karam had many things in common. They were both very attached to Lebanon and Syria, which at the time were part of the Ottoman empire, and they were both passionate about Arab literature.
Mokarzel quickly became her most important literary ally, supplying her with Arabic texts and encouraging her to study and write. Mokarzel also introduced Karam to the many influential Arab intellectuals he knew in New York City like Khalil Gibran and Mikhail Nu’aymi.
In 1899, when she was only 16 years old, she published her first article in Al-Hoda. A few years later, Karam became the paper’s columnist, writing mainly about women’s issues.
She took a six-month hiatus from her journalistic work to devote her efforts to writing a novel. She published her first novel, Badi’ah wa Fu’ad (Badi’ah and Fu’ad) in 1906. It won critical claim, with critics saying that “for the first time in the history of Arabic fiction, we meet a woman advocating, in strong terms, the necessity of a general solidarity among women.”
Two years later, she wrote Fatimah al-Badawiyyah (Fatimah the Bedouin), which depicts a strong friendship between an Arab woman and American woman despite their very different backgrounds. Her 1910 novel, Ghadat Amshit (The Girl from Amshit), rejects the tradition of arranged marriage.
In her novels, Karam articulated a feminist politics that was far ahead of its time: they openly criticised the patriarchy and supported the right of women to be live freely. She even identified “the government and the church” as the patriarchal institutions responsible for the oppression of women in Mount Lebanon.
(Her three novels were all published before Zaynab, the 1914 novel of Egyptian author Mohammed Hussein Heikal, which is widely considered to be the “first Arabic novel” by the accepted canon of Arabic literature.)
In 1912, Afifa Karam made history when she founded the monthly Arabic magazine Majallat al-Alam al-Jadid al-Nisaiyah (The New World: A Ladies Monthly Arabic Magazine) — one of the earliest periodicals dedicated entirely to Arab women. A year later, she launched another Arabic women magazine, Al-Maraa al-Souriya (The Syrian Woman). Both magazines circulated internationally.
Throughout her life, Karam remained faithful to two men: Naoum Mokarze, who not only supported her journalistic endevour but also published her novels, and her husband, John Karam, who steadfastly encouraged her to pursue her career.
In 1924, Afifa Karam died from cerebral hemorrhage. She was only 41 year old.
Sources:
Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies: Afifa Karam
Afifa Karam: Arab American Trailblazer for Women’s Rights
