Dearborn

Stories

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Pub Date Sep 05 2023 | Archive Date Aug 31 2023
Tin House | Tin House Books

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Description

A sharp, tender, and uproariously funny portrait of the lives of Arab American community members in Dearborn, Michigan.

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more.

In Dearborn, a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans.

By turns wildly funny, incisive, and deeply moving, Dearborn introduces readers to an arresting new voice in contemporary fiction and invites us all to consider what it means to be part of a place and community, and how it is that we help one another survive.

About the Author: Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the Middle East. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College, and co-editor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging

A sharp, tender, and uproariously funny portrait of the lives of Arab American community members in Dearborn, Michigan.

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the...


Advance Praise

"The stories in Dearborn—by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, astute and absurd—capture such a vital, underspoken aspect of the Arab-American experience, that sense of being not quite from the place you love and not quite loved by the place you’re from. Ghassan Zeineddine has a talent for those very small details of Arab life in a place like Dearborn—the generational fatalism, the converted garage living room, the unlikely mash-up of cuisines at the neighborhood restaurant. These are wonderful stories from an exciting new name in Arab-American literature." - Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise

"Dearborn is one of the funniest, truest, and most heartfelt books I have ever read. Zeineddine writes with so much grace and understanding, so much love and compassion, so much mastery that these stories will become part of who you are." - Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

"At once urgent and timeless, the stories in Dearborn are searing and unflinching snapshots of an immigrant community struggling to carve out space for itself, to find home in unfamiliar territory. The unforgettable characters slash through stereotypes as they navigate heart-wrenching and absurd situations, all the while grappling with identity and intergenerational tensions. The world Zeineddine creates is filled with beauty, brutal realities, and humor. I couldn't put it down." - Zaina Arafat, author of You Exist Too Much

"These stories will stay with you for weeks and years after you’ve finished them, making you again laugh, wonder, and rage. Dearborn is masterful, gentle, wild, and full of heart." - Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

"The stories in Dearborn—by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, astute and absurd—capture such a vital, underspoken aspect of the Arab-American experience, that sense of being not quite from the place...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781959030294
PRICE $17.95 (USD)
PAGES 288

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Featured Reviews

An impressive debut collection of interrelated stories set in Dearborn, Michigan in the Arab-American community. Home and belonging, desires, identity, migration, rites and rituals, religion devout or secular, generational conflicts, war trauma, sexuality, honest work and cons, and more are in these moving and warm and sometimes funny stories.

Thanks to Tin House and Netgalley for an ARC.

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