Week 15 Response

In Nadine Naber chapter called "Decolonizing Culture," she talks about her experience of being a child in an immigrant family residing in the SF Bay Area. Many of her memories would be her parents telling her to that she is unable to do certain things because it did not correlate with the culture of her parents. This becomes problematic for her because she is dealt to figure out which values does she follow, "Arab" or "American". What impacted me the most was when Naber mentioned that her immigrant parents felt the need to pressure her to become a perfect Arab girl since her parents felt were a large reflection of the family and the father(79). Nadine mentions that she "couldn't wear [my] trendy jeans with the tear down my side for the fear that my relatives and parents' friends would curse my sloppy clothes and bare skin"(80). This makes me think of not only women in the Arab community are pressured to be the ideal image of the family but also in many other countries such as my mothers in El Salvador. Nadine then speaks of why it was so important for her and the family to assimilate within a predominately white neighborhood(80). She mentions how her uncles had changed their names to American names because they were called many racist slurs(80). Through this Naber was able to fully understand the meaning of Orientals, and how that reflects the many reasons why her family struggle to assimilate being an immigrant family in America. It begins to influence the way she begins to see the world since she was unable to bring her problems to the real world because that is not the way to deal with immigrant family problems(81). Nadine then begins to express how she began to do research among the Arab community in the Bay Area and how that has been influenced between the tradegy that happening in the Bay as well as their homeland back East(82). Through her research she was able to encounter many Arab teens and older to share their stories discovering that Orientalism was the heart of their struggle growing up Arab(82). Because of Orientalism, many Arab girls were afraid to disobey their families values, being homosexual never existed, and social movements were disregarded because it did not follow the values of the Arab community. Orientalism created much fear within the Arab Community that Nadine mentions that prevents many conversations of Gender and Sexuality to be brought to the table(87). To many of these things I can relate while growing up. My mother is an immigrant from El Salvador and I remember her telling my sisters and I that we could not do many things such as sleep overs, ballet, friends birthday parties because she did not want us to nor did she give us an explanation.