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WORK TITLE: Pearls on a Branch
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2014079573
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Khūrī, Najlā Jurayṣātī
Variant(s): خوري، نجلا جريصاتي
Khoury, Najla
Special note: Non-Latin script reference not evaluated.
Found in: Ḥikāyāt wa-ḥikāyāt, 2014: volume 1, t.p.
(نجلا جريصاتي خوري = Najlā
Jurayṣātī Khūrī; Lebanese author)
Pearls on a branch, 2018: ECIP t.p. (Najla Khouri [in
rom.]) data view (she was born in Beirut, Lebanon; in
the 1970s, she taught at adult literacy programs and
later trained pre-school teachers; her work has been
influenced by her experience in education and her
interest in folk tales and children's literature;
founded and directed a puppet troupe and has developed
several educational toys; in 1997 she helped found the
NGO Assabil Libraries, which focuses on establishing
public libraries throughout Lebanon)
Associated language:
ara
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non-translated books (title's English translation in parenthesis)
(Rhymes and rhymes) | Eediyat wa eediyat | Dar Onboz and Assabil, 2009
(Rhymes and drawings) | Eediyat maa al rousoumat | Dar Onboz and Assabil, 2009
(The tree of heaven) | Shajarat al sama | Asala, 2011
(Fly o bird fly) | Tir ya teyr | Dar Onboz, 2013
PERSONAL
Born 1949, in Beirut, Lebanon.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator and writer. Adult literacy teacher, 1970s; founded and directed a puppet troupe, 1979; trained preschool teachers, 1980s; developed educational toys, 1984; NGO Assabil Libraries, cofounder, 1997.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1949, Najla Jraissaty Khoury taught adult literacy programs in the 1970s and later trained preschool teachers. She is interested in education, folk tales, and children’s literature. Working toward child-centered and educational goals, she also founded and directed a puppet troupe, has developed several educational toys, and in 1997, she helped found the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Assabil Libraries, a network of public libraries throughout Lebanon.
After she published several books in Arabic, in 2018 her book Pearls on a Branch: Arab Stories Told by Women in Lebanon Today was translated into English by Inea Bushnaq. During Lebanon’s civil war, Khoury traveled the country with a theater and puppet troupe, visiting refugee camps and isolated villages. She listened to and collected one hundred traditional Syrian and Lebanese folktales told by women, transcribed exactly as told by the storyteller so Khoury could share the oral stories the way parents and grandparents told their children, thus keeping the stories alive through the generations. For the English version of the book, Khoury and Bushnaq chose thirty stories, most of which feature young women who work to shape their future through generosity and cleverness.
While some of the stories have popular Western analogues, such as “Rapunzel” and “The Scorpion and the Frog,” Joan Curbow, writing in Booklist, warned readers that these are not fairy tales, and “notions of good and evil ‘are not as categorical’ as in western tales.” They also include a hint of protofeminism apparent as expressions of women who have no voice except among themselves, explained Curbow. Sara Ramey declared in World Literature Today: “Even the stories without a female protagonist are concerned with how women exercise power in the world and shape their own narratives. As one story puts it, ‘We will speak: we have stories to tell.’”
Highlighting stories about “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” a hungry fox taking care of birds, women outwitting men, and even a story about cows farting, a writer in Kirkus Reviews concluded: “A funny, bawdy, occasionally gruesome, and decidedly adult collection that celebrates small cultural variations amid large universal values.” Writing on the Asymptote website, reviewer Anaka Allen commented: “Comic, unique, and at times provocative, this collection represents an important addition to the canon of historical folktales and contributes a new cast of morally ambiguous mythological and animal characters, with the added bonus of intriguing female figures.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2018, Joan Curbow, review of Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women, p. 12.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2018, review of Pearls on a Branch.
World Literature Today, March-April 2018, Sara Ramey, review of Pearls on a Branch, p. 68.
ONLINE
Asymptote, https://www.asymptotejournal.com/ (March 21, 2018), Anaka Allen, review of Pearls on a Branch.
Najla Jraissaty Khoury
Najla Jraissaty Khoury was born in Beirut. In the 1970s, she taught at adult literacy programs and later trained pre-school teachers. Her work has been influenced by her experience in education and her interest in folk tales and children’s literature. Najla Khoury founded and directed a puppet troupe and has developed several educational toys. In 1997, she helped found the NGO Assabil Libraries, which focuses on establishing public libraries throughout Lebanon.
Najla Jraissaty Khoury was born in Beirut in 1949. Her work is marked by her interest education, children literature and folk tales. She worked in alphabetizing illetrate adults in the 1970s, and in training pre-school children teachers in the early 1980s. She created and directed a theater and puppet troupe in 1979, invented educational toys in 1984, and co-founded the first network of public libraries in 1997.
Some titles
Pearls on a branch | Hikayat wa hikayat – view details
Rhymes and rhymes | Eediyat wa eediyat | Dar Onboz and Assabil, 2009
Rhymes and drawings | Eediyat maa al rousoumat | Dar Onboz and Assabil, 2009
The tree of heaven | Shajarat al sama | Asala, 2011
Fly o bird fly | Tir ya teyr | Dar Onboz, 2013
Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women
Joan Curbow
Booklist. 114.11 (Feb. 1, 2018): p12.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women. By Najla Jraissaty Khoury. Tr. by Inea Bushnaq. Mar. 2018.300p. Archipelago, paper, $18 (9780914671961). 892.730108.
Khoury traveled throughout Lebanon during its civil war, collecting oral tales of women whose societal roles were proscribed in the extreme. She founded a theater troupe and used the tales as primary source material, from which she created plays for the troupe to perform. She has now winnowed the collected oral tales from 100 to 30 unique stories, many of which share ideas similar to such western fairy tales as Snow White. Often, the lowly are exalted, and deception is employed, as in the eponymous story, in which a young woman, by cunning, wins her "pearls on a branch." Many times these stories express a desire to upend power structures. Fairies do not play a role here, and notions of good and evil "are not as categorical" as in western tales. One could look for hints of protofeminism or use for comparative literature or read for pure enjoyment. The author's and translator's notes are helpful for appreciating the tales as expressions of women who had no voice except among themselves.--Joan Curbow
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Curbow, Joan. "Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2018, p. 12. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527771744/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e69914d5. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527771744
Najla Jraissaty Khoury: Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women
Sara Ramey
World Literature Today. 92.2 (March-April 2018): p68.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
Najla Jraissaty Khoury
Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women
Trans. Inea Bushnaq. New York. Archipelago Books. 2018. 270 pages.
The folkloric stories in Pearls on a Branch feature protagonists, often young women, who work to shape their future through generosity and cleverness. The tales begin with refrains like "There was or there was not," establishing the ambiguity of their realities, which mingle logic with magic, human with animal. Gathered by Najla Jraissaty Khoury from female Arab storytellers, the stories use repetition and rhyme to construct the vital atmosphere of fairy tales. Several of the stories have popular analogues, such as "Thuraya with the Long, Long Hair" and the Brothers Grimms' "Rapunzel." In "Abu Ali the Fox," a hungry fox vows not to eat prey anymore but ultimately can't resist his nature, a moral lesson also taught by the fable "The Scorpion and the Frog."
There are few true villains in this collection. The characters struggle with essentially human flaws, including destructive greed and jealousy, especially jealousy between women. In "Lady Tanaqeesh and the Eggs of the Tawawees," Lady Tanaqueesh's jealous sisters trick her into eating eggs that induce pregnancy. In the end, Lady Tanaqueesh chooses a lesser punishment for her sisters' crime, though she wanted to build a ladder of their bones. The orality of the story translates into print as Lady Tanaqueesh chants, "Going down I'd tread hard on every rung and cry: / Creak! Creak! / Have I harmed you? No not I!"
Dark emotions in the folktales are balanced with tenderness as lovers reconcile and wives pray for infants to hold. A barren woman in "The Olive Pit" is blessed with an olive pit for a daughter, which she nourishes until it sprouts. Female protagonists are agents of peace but also indelibly clever, demonstrating the humor, alternately ribald and subtle, at work in the lives of the tellers. In "The Day It Rained Dumplings," in order to win an argument, a wife tricks her husband into believing it rained dumplings by scattering them in the yard.
Even the stories without a female protagonist are concerned with how women exercise power in the world and shape their own narratives. As one story puts it, "We will speak: we have stories to tell."
Sara Ramey
University of Arkansas
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ramey, Sara. "Najla Jraissaty Khoury: Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women." World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 2, 2018, p. 68. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529356895/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7600a5ae. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A529356895
Khoury, Najla Jraissaty: PEARLS ON A BRANCH
Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Khoury, Najla Jraissaty PEARLS ON A BRANCH Archipelago (Adult Fiction) $18.00 3, 6 ISBN: 978-0-914671-96-1
Khoury originally published these 30 tales in Arabic in 2014, having collected them as she traveled through Lebanon with a puppet troupe during the country's civil war from 1975 to 1990.
The storytellers shared tales from their oral tradition with Khoury. Instead of a Western fairy tale's promise of "Once upon a time," these Arab tales begin with the charming, more realistic equivocation, "There was or there was not." Yet Western readers will recognize the wicked stepmothers, princes in love with poor girls, plucky unloved children, sorcerers and talking animals. Rapunzel-like heroines grow up locked away from the world in stories like "The Girl Who Had No Name" and "Thuraya with the Long, Long Hair." A huntsman substitutes animal blood for the blood of the Snow White-like damsel he's hired to kill in both "Lady Tanageesh and the Eggs of the Tawawees" and "O Palace Beautiful! O Fancy Friend!" whose heroine sets up household with Ali Baba's 40 thieves (instead of seven dwarfs) until an old woman shows up with a deadly apple. There's an Aesop ring to animal fables like "Abu Ali the Fox," about a fox taking birds under his protection until he gets hungry. However, the attention paid to bodily functions may startle Western readers. "A Cow Called Joukha" centers on farting, while a sweet romance centers on "The Singing Turd." According to Khoury, in the oral tradition, "certain stories told by women were for women only." Both proto-feminist innuendo--crafty women outwitting men--and sexual double-entendres abound. So "Jubayne the Fair" agrees to let an old man suck her finger whenever he wants until she wises up and runs away. And in the complex title story, a king rejects his only daughter because he mistakenly thinks she's tried to trick him into bringing her a husband when he travels to Mecca; she seeks revenge on the young man who caused this disgrace through overt sexual trickery and bed-swapping.
A funny, bawdy, occasionally gruesome, and decidedly adult collection that celebrates small cultural variations amid large universal values.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Khoury, Najla Jraissaty: PEARLS ON A BRANCH." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735859/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8e77e331. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A520735859
What’s New in Translation: March 2018
March 21, 2018 | in New in Translation, News, Reviews | by Anaka Allen and Janani Ganesan
Looking for your next read? You're in the right place.
Whether this March the leaves are falling or only starting to grow, new books in translation continue to push through borders and languages. This month, our editors review new translations from Germany and Lebanon, whose stories span diverse regions and explore complex notions of belonging.
Pearls-new-cover
Pearls on a Branch by Najla Jraissaty Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Inea Bushnaq, Archipelago Books
Reviewed by Anaka Allen, Social Media Manager
“It happened or maybe no.
If it did, it was long ago
If not, it could still be so.”
For twenty years, in the midst of Lebanon’s civil war that lasted from 1975 until 1990, the traveling theater company Sandouk el Fergeh (the Box of Wonders) traversed the Levant searching for inspiration for their live shows. The actors and their marionettes would travel from shelters to refugee camps, villages to towns, performing the oral tales painstakingly collected by their founder Najla Jraissaty Khoury. It was no small feat trying to find and record stories during wartime when suspicion and fear were particularly acute, not to mention the difficulty in assembling complete narratives from a depleting cache of collective cultural memory.
Oral tales are one of the most fragile cultural legacies, and too often die with their storytellers. So, what happens to the oral history of a region suffering through war and displacement? That’s what Khoury hoped to find out, and the question is what inspired her to embark on a rescue mission in search of these unwritten remnants of Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian culture. She collected dozens of folktales, writing them down exactly as they were told (repetitive phrases and all), culled one hundred from that catalog, and published them in Arabic. English speakers now have the opportunity to read a selection of thirty stories in Pearls on a Branch.
Comic, unique, and at times provocative, this collection represents an important addition to the canon of historical folktales and contributes a new cast of morally ambiguous mythological and animal characters, with the added bonus of intriguing female figures. Readers can’t help but be reminded of Snow White and her gang of merry miners, and may inadvertently search for other common threads, when delving into “O Palace Beautiful! O Fancy Friend!” But they will be pleasantly surprised and delighted by the Arabic counterpart’s twists and departures where Pomegranate-Seed-on-a-Platter, with the help of Ali Baba and his forty thieves, triumphs over her mother who has succumbed to a jinn’s seductive praise. In addition to stories of victorious beauties, there’s a selection of Aesop-like fables recounting creature adventures in the moralistic “Abu Ali the Fox” or “Who Ate the Wheat.” This exceptional anthology provides options for every reader, young and old, to enjoy.
Until the end of the last century, Levantine women were confined to their homes in deference to the customs of a male-dominated society. As a form of entertainment, after the day’s work had been done and the children sent off to bed, they would gather to spin these yarns of bravery and survival, of women who triumphed over foolish men and used their beauty and their wit to maneuver themselves out of dire circumstances. These are Scheherazade’s sisters, guardians of Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian folktales told by women, for women, of heroines who endure and finally succeed by their displays of courage and are celebrated for their boldness just as often as for their incredible ability to suffer in silence.
There are many figures to admire in Pearls on a Branch, and the translator must be counted among them. Inea Bushnaq’s challenge to transform the naturally flexible Arabic into the more rigid English could have resulted in a wooden and ungainly translation, but her interpretation elegantly retains the lyricism of the collection. Her preservation of a sense of the original’s rhythmic quality, more than making up for the loss of wordplay and rhyme, achieves the impossible—rendering the written audible, enough to hear generations of female voices calling out, inviting you to sit and listen to their timeless tales.
Pearls on a Branch
Arab Stories Told by Women in Lebanon Today
Najla Khoury
Inea Bushnaq (Translator)
Archipelago Books (Mar 6, 2018)
Softcover $18.00 (270pp)
978-0-914671-96-1
Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women is a collection of thirty stories curated by Najla Khoury, who spent years compiling, polishing, and editing these primarily oral works. Retold from generation to generation, the folktales originally represented a form of shared expression and entertainment for Lebanese women, as well as a creative rebellion against the limitations imposed by their culture.
As Khoury notes, for centuries women of the Middle East were kept from pursuing education and making their own choices. This domination began with fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and uncles, continued with husbands, and could even persist further through their own sons. Women were not free to challenge men’s edicts; if they did, they could suffer severe consequences.
Pearls on a Branch includes several stories of women overcoming restrictive circumstances to triumph (or, secure a reasonably happy marriage)—using beauty and wiles, intelligence and goodness.
Kings may send their daughters to the “palace of isolation” for displeasing them, if they haven’t already killed them at birth simply for being born female. In reality, this cruel authority was rarely questioned. In the invented tales told by actual women of Lebanon, magical elements and twists of fate intercede, and both poor girls and princesses find true love.
The stories of Pearls on a Branch vary from fairy tale-esque to curiously compelling or comic. Virgin pregnancies occur from eating peacock eggs or drinking cream left out in the moonlight. Talking roses offer their beauty to humans, mice have wedding banquets, and jewels sparkle amid a backdrop of a sultan’s gardens, camels, and mysterious spirits. These fantastic tales are culturally intriguing, and particularly notable for acknowledging the unique voices of Lebanese women, past and present.
Reviewed by Meg Nola
January/February 2018
Tuesday, 6 March 2018
Pearls On A Branch by Najla Jraissaty Khoury
Pearls On A Branch: Oral Tales collected by Najla Jraissaty Khoury
First published in Arabic as Hikayat wa hikayat by Dar al adab in Lebanon in 2014. English translation by Inea Bushnaq published by Archipelago Press today, the 6th March 2018.
Where to buy this book:
How I got this book:
Received a review copy via NetGalley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A collection of 30 traditional Syrian and Lebanese folktales infused with new life by Lebanese women, collected by Najla Khoury.
While civil war raged in Lebanon, Najla Khoury traveled with a theater troupe, putting on shows in marginal areas where electricity was a luxury, in air raid shelters, Palestinian refugee camps, and isolated villages. Their plays were largely based on oral tales, and she combed the country in search of stories. Many years later, she chose one hundred stories from among the most popular and published them in Arabic in 2014, exactly as she received them, from the mouths of the storytellers who told them as they had heard them when they were children from their parents and grandparents. Out of the hundred stories published in Arabic, Inea Bushnaq and Najla Khoury chose thirty for this book.
The story of how the arabic original of this book came to exist is as interesting as the tales it contains. By listening to many women across Lebanon between 1975 and 1990, Khoury endeavoured to record their traditional folktales and how they were told, thereby preserving an important part of these women's lives. Stories are told differently when they are spoken and when they are written so I was glad that Khoury transcribed the words pretty much verbatim. That atmosphere has been maintained in Bushnaq's translation too so, although in this English language edition we only have thirty of the story, we still have the introductory 'mattress' scene setting and the age-old turns of phrase. I appreciated the detailed introduction which explains the gathering and cultural importance of these tales.
Arabic folktales are both very similar and very different to the fairytales I remember reading and being told as a child. I recognised glimpses of the Snow White story here and of Rapunzel before they veered away. There aren't the moral endings of Western fairytales, but these stories still contain important guidance for adult life. For girls especially patience and endurance are valued qualities, preternatural beauty is of course essential and marrying into royalty is highly recommended - although not always with an instant Happily Ever After. It was very interesting to be given this opportunity to glimpse into such an essential but often overlooked aspect of Arabic life.