Join the Center for Latin American Studies for a talk with Professor Abeer Abdelhafez Abdelaal from Cairo University.
This talk will take place in a hybrid format, at Hagerty Hall 180, and also via CarmenZoom (a virtual link will be provided and the session will be recorded) . After the 40-minute talk, we will host a 20-minute Q&A session. Please register on the link below to attend.
About the talk
The literature of emigration in the 20th and 21st centuries occupied a prominent place in the literary, historical, and intellectual panorama, being one of the sources of human and documentary baggage together with the literary value that it contributes. Memorias de un emigrante (Memoir of an emigrant ) (1942) by the Syrian-Chilean writer Benedicto Chauqui (Homs 1895-Chile 1970), tells the story of his emigration from Syria to Chile as a thirteen-year-old teenager in the year 1908 with his grandfather and some of his relatives to join his two uncles in Santiago de Chile to escape the extreme poverty and hardship of life in the Levant at that time and under Turkish rule. Chauquí's emigration was not intentional but a mere chance to accompany his elderly grandfather. Once he finds himself in this new world in a country he doesn't know and a language he doesn't speak, his only weapon was his scholarly prowess, his strong Christian faith, and his yearning for the ideal.
In this book Chauqui displays the meticulous process of creating a parallel and hybrid identity - at the same time - between the human component of an Arab country and another in Latin America, thus managing to open a path suffering and going through numerous difficulties, in order to establish successful projects and become rich by achieving great wealth and a deep-rooted family legacy. On the other hand, his attachment to Arab literature, philosophy, and culture is startling. He is dedicated to translate Arabic poetry in general and that of Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) into Spanish, among other literary projects that he voluntarily elaborates. One of the most initial phases to establish the first contact of the modern presence of Arabic literature in one of the Latin American countries.
Chauqui founded a series of magazines in Mahjar with the purpose of defining and disseminating Arabic culture and literature, in addition to the journalistic contribution that favored the new life of the Arab emigrant community whose economic resources and educational and academic training was very limited. Chauqui's literary motivation was reflected in the formulation of his Mahjar experience in the form of an autobiographical text in whose pages he collects his autobiography from early childhood to his successful achievements in Chile, his second country, as he himself confesses on many occasions throughout from the book.
Chauqui's memory has been a great success since the date of its publication (1942) and up to the present, it has become a historical document that singles out a crucial period in the world at the beginning of the 20th century on the one hand, and the history of the Arab and Latin American countries on the other. The autobiography focuses on the intimacy of the emigrant and inquiries into the individual experience of man in front of the world, and in this way adds to the trail of essential memory books, diaries, and confessions, among which stand out The Confessions of Jean -Jacques Rousseau, Living to tell it by Márquez, An autobiographical essay by Borges, A fish in the water by Mario Vargas Llosa, and Paula by Isabel Allende among other varied examples and models.
About the author
Abeer Abdelhafez Abdelaal, Full Professor Spanish language and Hispanic literature, Cairo University and translator. Visiting professor of Spanish and Arabic in OWU (2017 till 2023). She studied Master and PhD at Complutense Madrid and Cairo University. Her research area focuses on contemporary Latin American narrative and poetry (XX-XXI), Comparative studies, contemporary Arabic narrative and Latin American orientalism. She published several articles in Spanish and Arabic.
Published more than 35 books translated from Spanish to Arabic and vice versa, including Don Quijote, Martín Fierro, Coplas a la muerte de su padre, Arlt, Cortázar, Juan Goytisolo, Cristina Rivera Garza, Alcíbiades Gonzalez del Valle, Oliverio Girondo, Pedro Mir, Ahmed Alshahawy, Carlos Aguasaco, among others.
She gave lectures at the Complutense University of Madrid, Denison University, University of Cincinnati, University of Zaragoza, University of Castilla la Mancha, University of Sharjah, University of Jordan, University of Denison, CUNY and Walt Whitman House in NY.
Visiting professor at the Universities of Barcelona, Autónoma Madrid, Castilla La Mancha and OWU.
Founder of the Wikipedia project - Translation from Spanish into Arabic in Arab Universities.
This event is sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and co-sponsored by the Middle East Studies Center. CLAS contributions are made possible through Title VI funding from the US Department of Education.
If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Julio Beltrán (beltrantapia.1@osu.edu). Requests made one week in advance of the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
