week15

In “Arab and Arab American Feminism, Gender, Violence, and Belonging,” the author Rabab Abdulhabi talks about how her parents are originally from Jordan and her being from the United States. Both her parents and her have different point of views about the American Culture and the Arab Culture. For her parents the Arab culture was very important and that is why they imposed the arab culture over to herself and her siblings because they wanted to keep their traditions. But, there were some times were she would disobeyed her parents with little things that it was enough for her parents to believe that she was being rebellions and that she was betraying her culture. In fact, for Abdulhabi parents the american culture was seen as trash culture, degenerate,  morally bankrupt, and sexually depraved. Contrast to the Arab culture that was seen as  morally resepectable, were they valued marriage, family and close relationships. However, Abdulhabi parents noticed that Muslim were begin portray differently in the news and were being call “terrorist” and “dirty arab.” At that point, her parents started to notice how they were treated and decided to assimilate more the American culture. For example, when they went to the store, she notice that they would change their names for something more American like such as John. However, for them their culture was still very important and they tried to keep it that way.