The event, titled "Second Person Singular," was held at the Granoff Family Hillel Center and was sponsored by the Arts and Sciences Diversity Fund, the Center for Humanities at Tufts (CHAT), the Fares Center, the Department of German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literatures, the International Relations program, the Judaic studies program and the Middle Eastern studies program.
Kashua is the author of three novels, "Dancing Arabs," "Let It Be Morning" and "Second Person Singular," and the creator of the TV series "Arab Labor." He is also a weekly columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The event was structured as a question-and-answer session in which CHAT Director Jonathan Wilson and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and CHAT fellow AmahlBishara acted as moderators. Wilson asked questions related to Kashua's novels, and Bishara focused on Kashua's work in television.
Bishara characterized "Arab Labor" as one of the few productions that has allowed her to "laugh politically about the Middle East." She likened its role showcasing an average Palestinian family to a skeptical Israeli audience to that of The Cosby Show (1984-1992) in American race relations in the 1980s.
Kashua explained that the show's central characters were based on his own family members and their experiences as Israeli Arabs.
"One of the critiques from Israeli viewers [is that] you didn't choose a real Palestinian family. Yes we did," he said.
"The reason why Amjad [the protagonist] is a journalist has nothing to do with the fact that I am a journalist. And the reason that the wife is a psychotherapist has nothing to do with the fact that my wife is a psychotherapist," he joked.
Kashua also discussed the challenges he faced in gaining traction for the show, citing the three years it took to get onto real-time commercial television and the negative backlash the concept aroused in Israeli and Arab viewers alike.
"The main goal was to convince the Israeli mainstream viewers to watch an Arab family on primetime," Kashua said. "We deal with [Amjad's] problems to fit into Israeli society. I needed to humanize the Arab characters to bring them to primetime TV."
"It was obvious that I need to address the Israeli viewer, address stereotypes on all levels," he added.
The author discussed the isolation he felt growing up as a Palestinian attending an Israeli high school as the motivation for the work he now does.
"I was taught by my Israeli friends to be ashamed of Arab language, Arab music and I felt so bad about not knowing all the things that they know," Kashua said.
"I would just sit in the library reading novels and I think that reading books created the first feeling of needing to react, needing to react in writing not violently," he added.
When asked about his use of Hebrew in his writing, Kashua explained that it is not a political choice, as Hebrew is simply the language he is more comfortable using in his writing.
"I am using language only as a tool. I am not trying to go deep into the conflict of choosing a language," he said.
Wilson ended the event by commending the impact of Kashua's work.
"It's not the job of the novel to solve the problem, the job of the novel is to present them perfectly, which is what you do so perfectly in both your novel and your show," he said.
"I have never managed to understand Israelis or Arabs. I think the reason I write is that I'm trying to understand," Kashua said.
