Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: These three pieces are from a riveting series in which Tarik Dobbs details the experience of Arab immigrants in Michigan in the early twentieth century, using documents from the Henry Ford Archives. Dobbs shows us how the Ford Motor Company’s Sociological Department and English School played a role in the assimilation of immigrants. As Dobbs explains it, “These poems utilize erasure and collage of Ford documents, along with original text, to expose a forgotten US white nationalist project.”
Each of the erasures below is accompanied by audio of Dobbs reading the piece:
The True American Undergoes a Spiritual Smelting Process
Melting Pot Ceremony at Ford English School, July 4, 1917, The Henry Ford Archive, Dearborn, Michigan
IMPURITIES
OF
FOREIGNNESS
ARE
BURNT
OFF
AS
SLAG,
TOSSED
AWAY,
LEAVING
THEM
100%
AMERICAN.
Basic English
Erasure of an Employee Letter to Henry Ford
Tarik Dobbs is an Arab American queer writer & text artist born in Dearborn, Michigan, on stolen land of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi people. Dobbs’s visual poems also appear in American Poetry Review, Best of the Net, and Poetry. Their poetry chapbook, Dancing on the Tarmac, was selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Yemassee, 2021). You can find their chapbook online at https://tarikdo.com.
For more miCRo pieces, CLICK HERE
