Remember Me to Lebanon

by Evelyn Shakir

"Evelyn Shakir paints tales that are rich in history and cultural detail, setting her stories in different eras, from the 1960s to the present and carrying us back, on occasion, to the turn of the twentieth century." "Each of Shakir's first- and second-generation women works in her own way to reclaim her Lebanese heritage - or to escape it and the gender roles it represents. In The Story of Young Ali a teenage girl resists her beloved father's traditional tales of honor and self sacrifice. In Name Calling, a young matron, defying her husband's insistence on conformity, aspires to be a flower child. The matriarch of House Calls, on the other hand, is so wedded to the past that she returns from the grave to harangue her Americanized family. Political turmoil sets the stage for two stories. In Oh, Lebanon, a young woman who has fled Lebanon's civil war and refuses to cover her hair with a scarf finds that turning her back on her past leads her in unexpected directions. And, in the wake of