John Karam talked about his work on Arab cultural studies in Brazil at Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies at University of Urbana-Champaign.
John Tofik Karam was born and raised in upstate New York, hearing stories that his maternal grandmother recounted of her birthplace, a town she called “trinta e três,” literally thirty-three. He heard fewer stories about his paternal grandparents who departed Kartaba in Ottoman Lebanon for Veracruz in Mexico and after a decade or so permanently moved to upstate New York. There, his paternal grandmother sang Mexican lullabies to his father and his paternal grandfather was affectionally called “el mexicani” (the Mexican, in colloquial Arabic), and his father, “ibn el-mexicani (the son of the Mexican, also in colloquial Arabic).
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