Jordan Times
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Abu-Jaber delivers lecture at
Kingdom's embassy in Washington
AMMAN (JT) — The Embassy of Jordan in Washington, DC hosted award-winning
Jordanian-American author Diana Abu-Jaber on Monday.
Abu-Jaber made a quick stop in Washington, DC as part of a book reading at the
embassy for her newly published book “The Language of Baklava,” according to a
statement released by the embassy.
The book is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian
father who loved to cook. Diana weaves the story of her life in upstate New York
and Jordan around vividly remembered meals, everything from Lake Ontario shish
kebab cookouts with her Arab American cousins to goat stew feasts under a
bedouin tent in the desert.
These sensuously evoked meals in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana's
childhood — American and Jordanian — and the richness and difficulty of
straddling both.
They also bring her wonderfully eccentric family to life, most memorably her
impractical, hot-headed, displaced immigrant father who, like many an immigrant
before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that
connection on to his children.
As in her fiction, Diana draws us in with her exquisite insight and compassion,
and with her amazing talent for describing food and the myriad pleasures and
adventures associated with cooking and eating.
Each chapter contains mouth-watering recipes for many of the dishes described,
from her Middle Eastern grandmother's “Mad Genius Knaffea” and her American
grandmother's “Easy Roast Beef,” to her Aunt Aya's “Poetic Baklava.”
The Language of Baklava gives us all the chance to not only grow up alongside
Diana, but also to share meals with her every step of the way — unforgettable
feasts that teach her, and us, as much about identity, love and family as they
do about food.
Abu-Jaber is the author of the novels Crescent, awarded the 2004 PEN Centre USA
Literary Award for Fiction and named one of the 20 best novels of 2003 by The
Christian Science Monitor, and Arabian Jazz, winner of the 1994 Oregon Book
Award and nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
She currently teaches at Portland State and divides her time between Portland
and Miami.