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How It All Began

Essays

It began simply enough as a commitment among three brothers to write down the stories they had shared for years during family reunions and phone calls before those memories faded. We also explored background information like photos, newspapers, and other documents as we gathered the stories. Then, we began posting on a private social media page just for family members. Soon we had connected with more than 200 relatives we did not even know we had. They shared their stories, photographs, and videos, creating a kind f snowball effect. 

As part of the research for this work, I have read countless books and essays on the history of the Middle East and Arab culture (see Bibliography).

I was born and raised in the United States and my parents, in their zeal to ensure we integrated completely into their adopted home, cut their kids off from their language and much of their culture. I understand why they did it but feel the loss nonetheless. While writing about our family I have begun to make those connections to our past. What began as a whisper has become a torrent of voices from the present and the past

We thought this would be a simple collection of stories we might just share with our children and at the end that may be as far as it goes. But as it has grown, we have delved deeper into who we are. The project has taken on a life of its own. In that life, there may be stories and themes of broader interest to a wide audience. The youngest brother Sami, triggered the family history project when he interviewed our parents to document the family’s history before they passed and it was lost forever. It was a great instinct and has been invaluable in our work.

In addition, Sami remarried later in life to a woman who just happened to be an accomplished author and essayist. Kim Dana Kupperman is a prolific author of numerous works:

Kim is the founding editor of Welcome Table Press, an independent nonprofit devoted to celebrating & publishing the essay.

She has been a teacher and editor for over thirty-five years. From 2011-2014, she was the Visiting Writer-in-Residence in nonfiction at Fordham University, and from 2010 to 2015, she was a faculty member at Fairfield University’s low-residency MFA. She has also taught at West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA, Johns Hopkins MA in Writing, and Montgomery College and at many conferences. 

Kim is the former managing editor of the Gettysburg Review, where she also coordinated an annual summer writers’ conference. She has won numerous well-deserved accolades for her work including:

  • The 2013 Normal School Prize,
  • The 2010 Bakeless Prize in Nonfiction, 
  • The 2003 Robert J. DeMott Prose Prize from Quarter after Eight, 
  • First place in the 1996 Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest.
  • Fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon ReviewWriter’s Workshop, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Center for Book Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

When Kim married into our family she began to hear our stories at family gatherings. She saw us laugh and cry as we recounted the tales. Kim began to gently encourage us to write more broadly and more deeply than we originally intended, in the hopes that we might produce something worth publishing to a  broader audience. She became a mentor and then a writing workshop leader for us, and ultimately an editor. When we thought we had it right she said “Nice—now write it again.”

I thought this project would take a couple of months when we started and it has now been clos to a couple of years and there is still more to do. Thus far we have a family website, a social media page, a family history Wikipedia, a genetic analysis of the brothers, a huge family tree project on ancestry.com, verbal recordings of our parents interviewed before their deaths, and a collection of writing and essays that will likely produce at least one and possibly as many as three books.

We shall see.