Week 15 Readings

Nadine Naber's piece was reflective on the colonial influence of Arab culture specifically in the U.S. It was interesting to see how Arabs view there internal and external problems and why they choose or choose not to identify them. She speaks a lot about her confusion growing up in "two worlds" telling her what it means to be not only a woman but an Arab woman in America. She also addresses the difficulties with trying to balance them and figuring out her identity in today's society without losing a sense of self and identity.

It seems that that is the struggle for many families that are migrating and trying to establish themselves in the U.S. This piece reminded me of Borderlands written by Gloria Anzaldua where she talks about the  importance of understanding and claiming cultural roots but also the heartache of realizing that the culture you fight for is the same culture that oppresses in the way that it doesn't provide a safe space for people of their community to be who want to be when it comes to sexuality and gender roles. It was a powerful perspective to read because of how important I believe it is to reclaim roots that have been stripped away through colonization but also understanding that there are internal factors that I deal with everyday, in my own culture, that contribute to this dehumanization of it's our own people. This point also relays to another piece I read entitled Sexuality and Discourse by Emma Perez where she backtracks the internal problem of machismo in latino culture and how colonizers can be rooted back to this because of the strive for success and the standards that they have placed of what it truly means to be successful.

In the same way, it seemed that Naber was addressing this observation too where the media influences how Arabs act on certain issues and what they define as important or "fight worthy". There's this conflict of wanting to take accountability for where the culture is faulted, itself, but easier to address what the U.S. has done because of the fear of how they would be represented by the media.

While Naber touches on the fact that homophobia is an internal problem within the Arab culture, Huda Jadallah talks about her own experience being an Arab lesbian mother and the different intersectionalities that she faces because of cultural pressures and social stigmas placed by the media. It was also a good follow up piece to read because it shows a first hand perspective of the topics that Naber had been lecturing about in her analysis.

It was cool to read, connect and identify how different cultures accommodate to fit this idea of what it means to be them in American society..... I dont know if that makes sense.