By Audrey Fong
From the second I read about Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut short story collection, Dearborn, I had a feeling that I’d enjoy it. Themes of generational trauma, the after effects of war, and homebuilding may seem like cliches within Asian American literature, but they draw me in time and time again. Plus, what’s wrong with the proliferation of these topics, if they’re the authors’ truths?
Dearborn covers all of these topics, taking the reader deep into the town of Dearborn, MI, the largest majority-Arab city in the U.S. Spanning several decades, the collection covers a wide range of Dearbornite experiences from how the older generation fled their home countries to how the younger generation grapples with the age-old Asian American conundrum of being American while still holding onto their homeland’s culture.
From a man teaching his son how to hide money from the IRS in frozen whole chickens to characters named Uncle Sam and Rocky attempting to prove their Americanness as a means of avoiding governmental questioning, Zeineddine’s stories often brink on the ridiculous, and yet the characters are so well written and the reader is given such insight into their interior thoughts that you can’t help but lean into the absurd and go along for the ride, especially since many of the characters’ fears are fully justified when one considers the way Islamophobia shapes so much of how the characters are treated in the U.S.
This absurd sense of humor shines in the story “Speedoman,” in which “the first Arab–he must have been Arab–we saw in a speedo” arrives at the Ford Community Center, disrupting the men and women’s daily routine of relaxation, sitting in the jacuzzi or gossiping next to the pool. The community becomes obsessed with Speedoman, wondering where he came from and why he insists on wearing Speedos. Out of awe for this man, some even emulate his reading choices, hoping to adopt some of his tastes. Zeineddine’s writing style perfectly captures the tone of their fascination:
Our first thought: What man wears pink? His black hair was slicked back. He had a bushy mustache and long sideburns. Our second thought: ’70s porn star, not that we watched porn, let alone ’70s porn. That filth was haram; we were righteous Muslims.
This section made me snort-laugh when I first read it. The last sentence plays with a classic comedic technique in which one condemns something but accidentally reveals that one has done exactly that which is being looked down upon. Additionally, the image of a man in a bright pink Speedo and with a ’70s porn mustache blows up Speedoman to cartoonish proportions, especially when compared to the more modest audience at the community center.
Echoing comedies like Derry Girls and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, “Zizou’s Voice” taps into a similar frenetic energy; all three stories have a certain disregard for societal expectations and embrace the messiness of one’s early adult years, running headfirst into the unknown.
An aspiring novelist, Zizou has been writing a fantasy novel for years, all while his parents urge him to do something with his life. Because of his beautiful voice, Zizou decides to record himself reading the Quran with a friend, who owns recording equipment. Together, they add audio effects and music to it, which some community members find disrespectful, while others love the added flair. As these recordings of the Quran become more popular, Zizou starts to dress as a more traditional Muslim man in order to look more the part and to sell more recordings. While not exactly the same as the episode of Derry Girls in which the main characters fake a religious miracle, there is a similar energy and sense of humor to the short story. Both push religious traditions to the brink, bordering on sacrilegious, yet the joke is ultimately about the dumb, often rash, decisions one makes as a teenager or young adult to avoid their parents’ judgments and expectations.
However, Dearborn is not all laughs and jokes. Capturing the Arab American community in Dearborn, Zeineddine often touches back on how Dearborn became majority Arab, circling back to their violent histories in the 20th-century (“Since the creation of Israel, our city had been home to refugees from the Arab world.”). “Rabbit Stew” is an especially heartrending story about the way these histories continue to impact those in Dearborn. While still a young child in Lebanon, the narrator is kept safe during an Israeli bombing when his uncle picks him up and rushes him down to a bomb shelter. In the narrator’s mind, his uncle is a hero and someone to be admired. However, years later, when the uncle visits the narrator, who is now a teenager, in Dearborn, the narrator slowly comes to understand the way war has worn down his uncle into the disheveled individual who stands before him, accepting money from the narrator’s mother and unable to hold down a job. The way in which the narrator is forced to grapple with who his uncle is today and how he, in turn, becomes the protective figure for his uncle, speaks to the way that trauma can emotionally stunt someone. This reversal of care also touches on how the younger generation inevitably must care for the older generation.
For fans of Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties and Jamil Jan Kochai’s The Haunting of Hajji Hotak, Dearborn is a must read. What all three short story collections do so well is how they tackle the way in which trauma trickles down and how war impacts each refugee group. However, these collections do not fully give into the violence and despair, and they use humor and commentary from younger generations to expand what it means to be Cambodian/Afghan/Lebanese American within literature. These collections are not trauma porn by any means; they’re depictions of communities that, while bounded by histories of war and violence, are moving forward, creating their own aspirations and traditions in the U.S.
Dearborn is, without a doubt, a short story collection that I will be returning to time and time again. Its unique mixture of charm, humor, tragedy, heartbreak, and hopefulness makes me excited to read more from Zeineddine in the coming years.
Join Soapberry Review for our Dearborn book club on Saturday, August 24 at 5:00 p.m. PST over Zoom. RSVP here.
Audrey Fong is your stereotypical Southern Californian. She loves the beach, drinks more boba than the doctor recommends, and has an Insta-famous dog. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.