week 15 nadine naber

In this week’s reading, Nadine Naber discusses on the subject of the cultural disputes uprising ever since being a child in San Francisco and having deeply rooted upbringings of her family’s culture. Coming from a strong Arab background, the culture embedded within each family member was brought up whenever they could do something, when they could not, who could belong and who did not. The American and Arab values and differences that Naber had to face were not easy. She did respect her culture’s rules and guidelines, however this was not entirely true at all times. What felt even worse about not listening to her parents was that when breaking the rules there were times she felt as if she was disrespecting her people’s culture. Because this culture revolved around the word, “we.” Naber also endured the struggle of knowing her uncles need to change their names, in order to stop being harassed by Americans. This exemplified how her family had to assimilate into this American culture, however most things they could not necessarily do was part of the American culture. Even then, assimilation was difficult. Orientalism was the struggle she and her people had to face, because, despite following their culture, it brought them to a greater risk of belonging in a new country. The culture that Naber had to face is much more different than what I had to follow compared to us both being American born, yet having two separate cultures. I am not saying one culture is better than the other, but each culture takes time in order to assimilate in a country like this. Nonetheless, this reading was eye opening and relatable in many aspects to individuals with immigrant families.

Decolonizing culture

Nadine Naber writes about the cultural clashes her family and neighbors met when moving to the US from Jordan, and how it affected the way she was brought up. She talks about the "cultural war" between American and Arab values that she as a teenager had to endure, and the pain of feeling like she betrayed her culture when she chose to go against her parents rules. The issue of us vs. them is discussed throughout the chapter, as she and other Arab-Americans she grew up with or interviewed met the same attitudes from their parents, something she calls reversed orientalism. Naber explains the theory behind orientalism, and shows us how their immigrant parents turned it around to the favor of their Arab culture. Basically, whatever their parents did not want them to do, became part of the "American culture," which was morally bankrupt, sexually depraved and degenerate. Naber talks about how much stricter her and other immigrant parents were compared to her relatives in Jordan, and concludes that the "Arabness" she was brought up in is a reaction to the cultural clash her parents met when moving to America, rather than built on traditional Arab values. Through interviews, she discusses similarities between herself and other young Arab-Americans, to come up with theories about the historical conditions and power structures that have shaped their community.

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.

Week 15 Reading Response

In Nadine Naber’s chapter entitled “Decolonizing Culture,” she examines the ways in which “Arab culture”—particularly as it pertains to the dominant middle-class Arab Americans—is imagined and reinforced. By doing so, she simultaneously interrogates the perpetuated dichotomy between “Arabness” and “Americanness.”Naber begins by recounting personal stories of how Arab “culture” was constantly used as a tool to assert control over her and her siblings, which essentially translated as being the opposite of “American” in order to truly “be Arab”; that is to say, she notices that it became a common understanding that being American is to immerse oneself in sexual promiscuity and weak family structures, while being Arab was its antithesis. By noticing this reinforced dichotomy, Naber illustrates how gender and sexuality, and their attached ideologies, are among the biggest indicators of this imagined difference between American and Arab cultures. For example, in one of the interviews she conducted within Arab communities, a participant discloses that “[t]here was pressure to marry an Arab woman because the idea was that ‘She will stand by her family, she will cook and clean, and have no career…She will do anything for her husband” whereas “‘American women leave their families’” (83). The ideals of femininity and heterosexuality and the corresponding imagined “good Arab girl,” then, become the primary symbols of maintaining Arab “culture” and rejecting “Americanness.” Arabness is painted as morally superior. Naber further discusses this idea of Arab “culture” that actively works to be in opposition of American “culture” as “an immigrant survival strategy for replacing U.S. Colonialist and Orientalist discourses about Arabs, Muslims, and the Middle East with seemingly positive or empowering concepts of culture identity” (85). Ironically, she notes, homophobia and patriarchy that seem essential to Arab “culture” are actually sustained within middle-class Arab communities in order to meet the “demands of white middle class acceptability” (86). This is to say: though it seems Arab Americans work to maintain their learned culture from their nation of origin, compulsory heterosexuality and patriarchy have emerged not just because of cultural matters, but because of their subconscious assimilation—not because of their desire to be un-American (read as not sexually promiscuous and not having broken families). Naber asserts that it is crucial for Arab communities to talk about things such as this compulsory heterosexuality because it enables steps forward for dismantling divisions between Orientalism and anti-Orientalism, American “culture” and Arab “culture,” and “the communal” and “the political.”

Week 13

In Cynthia Enloe’s “The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire”, Enloe explores the idea of the United States as an empire and what it takes to be an empire in the past and what it means to be an empire today. She also asks an important question: where are the women in these empires? Whether we are discussing an empire of the past or today, feminist historians know that “diplomatic halls, the bloody battlefields and the floors of stock exchanges” are not where we’d find them. We are to look inside brothels, factor windows and parlors for they are the sites where women are and where the foundation to empire-building is found. 

An unexpected political forum for most would be found in a beauty salon, where women of different ages, backgrounds and opinions can be found sharing ideas and educating one another in a same environment. That is perhaps why one of the three women of the Governing Council in Iraq is Nimo Din’Kha Skander, a woman who operates a small hair salon in Baghdad. Unfortunately, that low number of represented women still implies a largely male dominance in the council with the females voice often marginalized and amounting to little to no influence. Iraqi women activist oppose the imbalance of sexes on the council and what that imbalance could imply for a new draft of the country’s constitution. This has forced some to reach out to international organizations and alliances to strengthen their voice and it’s these cross-national alliances among women that has widened understanding and knowledge and challenges us all to explore the real impact of empires today and what they’re capable of becoming.

Week 6 Posting

In Afsaneh Najmabadi "(Un)Veiling Feminism", Najmabadi's goal is to point out how feminism has worked as a veil to understanding different Islamicate societies which works against building working alliances in contemporary gender politics. She wants to make it clear that her study and historicization of secularism, nationalism and feminism in this essay is not to point out how women were once united, then divided and now are in a period of finding bridges to reconnect in todays day an age. Instead, the author points out that secularism, nationalism and feminism are historically defined and therefore differ for each country and to understand their definition of these terms, it is imperative to understand their historical context and to not group them together as one, as if assuming all Islamic countries are the same and for the same reasons. Najmabadi uses Iran as an example of this veiling generalization that plagues Islamic countries. The configurations of Islam are have unfolded/are unfolding as they should based upon the fact that the Islamic republic has been in power for more than 20 years.

Building upon Iran as an example, in her section titled "Woman and the Culture of Revolution", Najmabadi  points out that despite the legal and social restrictions that are placed upon women and the fact that feminist in the country still feel silenced, there is still a flourishing of women's intellectual and cultural production. According to the author, women who are responsible for this uprising are not only doing this to prove the islamic republic wrong and to succeed against all odds. It is also the rise of the Islamist moment in the 70's and the emergence of a new political sociability that centers around gender and its place is the political discourse making what was once marginal and illegitimate into a light of immediate authenticity and importance.

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.