In light of our recent assigned reading for class, the artical "Going Global: The Transnational reception Of Third World Women", I treid to read The girl In The Tangerine Scarf without being too objective or subjective. I have never really been so concious of my text analysis before this novel, where i found it hard not to involve myself in the story, focusingon mine and Khandr's difference or sameness. Considering our possible topics, how white people in Indiana related to Indiana in general, I felt a huge sense of how different I was to the character. I didn't feel as though Monja Kahf wanted her nonmuslim reader to relate to this story as much a s she wanted to show us a picture of a different reality. by this, i mean that she went to no great effort to explain any Muslim tradition to her reader. She uses Arabic phrases and mentions how Kahdra and her family must do this or that or protect this,. all using term with no hint as to their meaning.
When i would read about her mother and father's very opinated view of americans, menaing of course, white americans, I felt like they were talking about me. I even started to feel a little dirty in how I have been socialized. Indiana, a state that borders kentucky (of which I am from) has always been a state that I have decided to despise, based on the small portion I have grown to know across the river from Louisville. in my mind, they are hoosiers and I am something completely unlike them. the "them" I refer to are the people that IU guess I have subconciously decided are white, somewhat trashy hoosiers who want to cut down Louisville's trees so they can build a bridge and steal our jobs and pollute our environment to commmute to work. Suddenly, when I read this book, I saw that, in the eyes of the Shammys, I may as well have unpius relations with every one of the hoosiers that I thought were so unlike me. The Shammy's seemed to define hoosiers the same way that I always have: White, trashy, unclean, wasteful. The difference is that the Shammys feel much more intensely about how one is clean or unclean, etc. and that I, therefor, more than likely would fit into such a mold.
I'm not saying all of this to express my distain for this family or to defend my own pride. On the contrary, I'm sure it actually gave me a little persepective into how a family like the Shammy family would feel, as they consistently face prejudice from these white people. It just makes me sad that The people of their community in Indiana make them hateful toward the land of Indiana and the poeple of all of the United States. It's certainly interesting perspective.
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I like your explanation for the Arabic words in the text. It forces non-Islamic readers to refrain from jumping to conclusions. It is almost like the author created a world in which we could not fully understand. Much the same way the Shammy's felt about America. This forces the reader to be one step behind the main characters in the book, which is similar to the way minorities are sometimes treated in American society.
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