'Birds of Paradise'

This is the fifty-fourth of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our fifty-fourth pathbreaker is Diana Abu-Jaber, who writes fiction about Arab and Arab-American culture and identity. As contributing writer, John Mason describes, her stories reflect her intercultural experience, growing up in New York state and Jordan, and the cross-cultural realities of her Jordian father and American-born, Irish-German mother. Diana’s stories often involve the culture of food and food production, as practiced by her two families. She is a professor of English and currently a Writer-in-Residence at Portland State University.