Episode 8: Wessam Elmeligi
In this episode, Pauline Homsi Vinson interviews professor and author Wessam Elmeligi about his graphic novels Y and Y and Jamila. Written during the Arab Spring, Y and Y contrasts the innocence of childhood with the brutality of war. Jamila follows the journey of one Egyptian woman navigating familial and cultural expectations, defying euro-centric stereotypes, and ultimately recognizing the truth of her name.
Wessam Elmeligi is Assistant Professor and Director of the Arabic Translation Certificate and the Comparative Literature Certificate at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, researching Arabic and comparative literature and language as well as Arab cinema and art. His book The Poetry of Arab Women from the Pre-Islamic Age to Andalusia (Routledge 2019) is a critical translation and anthology where he translated and collected more than 400 poems by around 200 Arab women poets, most of whom are translated and discussed for the first time in English.
His recent book Cultural Identity in Arabic Novels of Immigration: A Poetics of Return (Rowman and Littlefield 2020) examines Arab narratives about West and East encounters from the 12th to the 21st centuries, representing Arab countries including Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. He also wrote and illustrated two graphic novels, Y and Y, and Jamila.
