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A biography section demystifies Gibran’s self-mythologizing by tracing his origins in Bsharri, his Maronite upbringing, and key family events that shaped his 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does the document argue that Gibran needs justification in the American Writers series?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"It notes that The Prophet is beloved worldwide but has not been widely recognized as an American classic, and the author has not been fully accepted as an American writer, so his inclusion requires explanation.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How does the document describe Gibran’s relationship to America and Arabic culture?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"It emphasizes that Gibran spent most of his adult life in the United States and wrote in both English and Arabic, while also stating that The Prophet can feel isolated from its Arabic cultural roots.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What does the biography section focus on regarding Gibran’s early life?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"It explains how Gibran spun fanciful personal stories, then counters them with biographical facts: his birth in Bsharri, his Maronite upbringing, and family 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whose work has yet to receive critical acclaim equal to his popular appeal. There is no question that Gibran’s work in Arabic was central to the development of twentiethcentury Arabic literature—in that Arab Romanticism begins with Gibran, the pivotal figure in the Mahjar movement of émigré Arab writers centered in New York. There is also no question that Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet (1923)—a small volume of aphorisms (wise sayings) offering pithy wisdom of an almost prophetic quality—belongs to world literature, for it is known and loved the world over. As an American man of letters, however, Gibran has received scant attention from Ameri- can literary critics. Since The Prophet has yet to be widely recognized as an American classic, and the author yet to be fully accepted as an American writer, Gibran’s inclusion in the American Writers series requires some justification.  \nEminent scholars including Irfan Shahid (professor emeritus at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.) and Suheil Bushrui (professor emeritus and current director of the Kahlil Gib-ran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland at College Park) have made the case for Gibran’s recognition as an American writer worthy of note. According to Bushrui, America is entitled to claim Gibran as one of its sons (even if not a native son) as fully and as authentically as his native Lebanon can lay such claim: “In his work, he became not only Gibran of Lebanon, but Gibran of America, indeed Gibran the voice of global consciousness”(1996, p. 10) . After all, the young Gibran spent only the first twelve years of his life in Bsharri (a village near the famous“Cedars of God”), where he was born in 1883, before emigrating with his family to the United  \nStates. Apart from a two-year study in Paris and two brief return visits to Lebanon, Gibran spent his entire adult life—the last two-thirds of his life, infact—entirely on American soil, dying in New York at the age of forty-eight. In The Prophet, the city of Orphalese is often said to represent America (or New York) .  \nShahid underscores the fact The Prophet was America’s best-selling book of the twentieth century, not counting the Bible, and that Gibran outsold all other American poets, from Walt Whitman to Robert Frost. According to Gibran’s New York publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, The Prophet has sold more than ten million copies. The book’s success was due entirely to its own appeal, as Knopf never promoted it. Strangely, Gibran is arguably America’s best-loved prose-poet, whose market appeal continues despite criti- cal indifference. It’s true that Gibran had what might be called a double psyche, and inhabited two thought-worlds at once. As an Arab Ameri- can, Gibran wrote in two languages: English and Arabic. Arabic was his mother tongue, and English his second language. As an accomplished man of letters of considerable influence in the Middle East, Gibran inspired a literary renais-sance in the Arab world, such that all modern Arabic poetry bears the marks of Gibran’s. Yet Gibran’s work has had little influence in Ameri-can letters, despite its enormous popular appeal. Notwithstanding, Shahid thinks that Gibran has not been fairly treated as an American writer. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, categorically, The Prophet exists in splendid isolation, severed from its Arabic cultural roots. And so The Prophet will have to be evaluated, or reevaluated, on its own literary merits and for its singular contribution to the American literary heritage.  \nKAHLIL GIBRAN  \nBIOGRAPHY  \nA biography ofKahlil Gibran’s life is complicated by the fact that Gibran himself spun some fanciful tales about it. He embroidered, embellished, lionized, and mythologized himself. He claimed, for instance, that his father was a wealthy Arab aristocrat and that his grandfather owned a g","cbCaipCp5mcDPBor","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaipCp5mcDPBor","pdf",288911,18,"English","# KAHLIL GIBRAN\n## The Prophet and American literary recognition\n## Biography","[{\"question\":\"Why does the document argue that Gibran needs justification in the American Writers series?\",\"answer\":\"It notes that The Prophet is beloved worldwide but has not been widely recognized as an American classic, and the author has not been fully accepted as an American writer, so his inclusion requires explanation.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the document describe Gibran’s relationship to America and Arabic culture?\",\"answer\":\"It emphasizes that Gibran spent most of his adult life in the United States and wrote in both English and Arabic, while also stating that The Prophet can feel isolated from its Arabic cultural roots.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the biography section focus on regarding Gibran’s early life?\",\"answer\":\"It explains how Gibran spun fanciful personal stories, then counters them with biographical facts: his birth in Bsharri, his Maronite upbringing, and family circumstances that influenced his outlook.\"}]","Kahlil Gibran Biography - The Prophet | PDF",1789139101,28]