university, ending years of unwarranted academic reluctance to include Gibran in the curriculum. The second was the result of a bill passed by Congress and the House of Representatives, followed by a special commemoration ceremony in May 1991, over which the then-President of the United States of America presided. Gibran must surely be the only immigrant poet ever to have been accorded such academic and national recognition. Additionally, over the seven decades since it was first published, Gibran‘s most famous work, The Prophet, is second only to the Bible in terms of the number of copies sold in America in this century
Gibran lived for most of his adult life in America, in Boston and New York. Would it be true to say that he was as much an American as he was Lebanese? What were Gibran’s feelings about America while he lived there?
America is, in some ways, entitled to claim Gibran as one of her one, as he spent only his first 12 years in Lebanon before emigrating to the United States. He was not only a man from the East who brought a much needed element of spirituality to the West, but he was also equally a man of the West. Gibran benefited from an environment in which freedom, democracy, and equality of opportunity opened doors before him as would have been possible nowhere else in the world. Therefore, his achievement symbolizes the achievement of America herself, a nation of immigrants which through its ingenuity and largesse has created a truly international society thriving on unity in diversity.
Gibran was indeed impressed by the achievements of America, noticing the material well-being of the majority of its citizens. However, he viewed his new home from the vantage-point of his own cultural heritage and recognized that America‘s success was incomplete. He wanted to infuse some Eastern mysticism into Western materialism, believing that humanity could be best served by a man capable of existing in both cultures simultaneously, acknowledging the virtues of each. And, although he longed to go back to his homeland, he was never slow to declare his appreciation for the nation which had taken him to its bosom: ?The Americans are a mighty people, indefatigable, persistent, unflagging, sleepless and some dreamless.?