page_title: Layyah Barakat
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Layyah Barakat / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: A message from Lebanon 1912 by Layyah Barakat died 1940
context_page_description: Layyah Faris Anton Alkazin Barakat was a Syrian-born Christian missionary, writer, temperance activist, and prison reformer, based after 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the first Arab-American woman to write and publish her autobiography, when A Message from Mount Lebanon was published in 1912.
context_section_description: In Beirut and Cairo, Layya Alkazin Barakat worked with Presbyterian missionaries as a teacher. She escaped the ‘Urabi revolt in 1882 and immigrated to the United States that year, with her daughter, her husband, his brother, and other family members.
  In the United States Layyah Barakat took an interest in reform work, especially prison reform and temperance. She served on committees of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, touring and inspecting prisons with other concerned men and women. She was a delegate to the fourth world conference of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Toronto in 1897. She was "a delightful public speaker... much in demand" for women's church groups, where she was admired for her "sweet face and simple story", but also for her "fervent eloquence".
  Layyah Barakat's autobiography, A Message from Mount Lebanon (1912), is believed to be the first autobiography by an Arab-American woman to be published. In 1919 she carried donated food and clothing to Syria. In 1922, a small orphanage for girls in Syria was opened by Protestant missionaries and named after Layyah Barakat, in recognition of her fundraising work. She traveled back to her hometown to attend the opening.
caption: "A Message from Mount Lebanon"
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