Through and Through

Treasured in the Arab-American literary community, Through and Through is a collection of ten broadly interrelated stories originally published in 1990. One of the first books of modern Arab American fiction, Geha's stories of-fer a warm, inspired portrait of an extended Arab family in a Lebanese and Syrian community in Toledo, Ohio, spanning the decades between the 1930s and the present.In a series of vignettes, Geha follows three generations of an Arab-American family as they create a new community and way of life, struggling to keep their Arab roots vital while adapting their culture to new conditions. In "e;Holy Toledo,"e; Nadia, "e;a tomboy in her dungarees,"e; watches Ameri-can women come into her town to shop. Although she calls them silly, she "e;wished that she were one of them, returning with them into that huge strangeness, America, luring her despite the threat it seemed to hold of loss and vicious sickness."e; Portraying both the anguish and the humor of nego-tiating between the old world and the new, these stories offer a passionate, unvarnished glimpse into the lives of an immigrant community.