A short story collection sparkling with humor and charming insight, Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine invites readers to experience contemporary life in the midwestern United States through the lens of Arab Americans who have settled in the titular Michigan city--men and women at various stages of reinvention, each striving toward their own version of the American dream.
For Yasser, a muscular Lebanese butcher with "furry hands," it means escaping his responsibilities on Friday mornings to dress up covertly as Yusra, his female alter ego, and to walk the streets as her, disguised conveniently in a niqab and abaya. To Hiyam, who fled civil war in Lebanon and is married to a wholesome American man, owning her own real estate business and driving a black Escalade with tinted windows represents the epitome of self-made success. Even while piously praying, she finds herself thinking, "I'm a CEO, bitches."
Zeineddine is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College, and a subtle comic undertone runs through his 10 stories, drawing on the naiveté of newcomers with Hollywood aspirations and Arab parents longing for that ultimate brag-worthy status symbol: to see their adult child's business advertised for all their friends to admire. "When will I see your gorgeous face on a billboard?" a mother beseeches her deadbeat son in "Zizou's Voice."
With an uncanny talent for peering deep into his characters' souls, and drawing on the basic humanity they share with their American neighbors, Zeineddine's stories illuminate the vast, comforting similarities culturally divergent communities share with one another. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer