If you recall from Lisa Suheir Majaj's "New Directions," one of her recommendations for Arab-American literature is that authors deal more seriously with prose.

Here we have our first major pieces of prose fiction since The Book of Khalid.

We'll discuss some mechanics of prose in class Tuesday, but in the meantime I'd like to hear your reactions to a few things.

How do these two short stories portray adolescence? Since adolescence is a transient state of being, the time of becoming an adult, how do these characters, Eli and Lugman, undergo their transformations? How do their cultures (Arab and American, Maronite and Muslim) play similar or different roles in that transformation?

How would you compare these two pieces of short fiction to either The Book of Khalid as an example of long fiction or to the poetry we've read so far?

Think about your own (recent) adolescence. Share an experience like Eli's or Lugman's where becoming aware of those around you helped initiate or assist your transformation into an adult.