The tenth chapter of G. Willow Wilson’s The Butterfly Mosque, illuminates Willow’s transformation from an outsider of her own homeland to an accepted entity of her self-made realm of religion and culture. For the majority of her life, Willow had been unsuccessfully seeking the sense of normalcy that accompanies inclusion. Because she covered up her fascination in the unexplainable, Willow never felt accepted by her family until they appreciated her beliefs at the engagement party by bonding with Omar’s family. Willow depicts the memorable blending of culture and family in “Arrivals and Confessions”: “…my family and Omar’s family agreed to love one another for no other reason than that we had asked them to… it no longer deeply mattered to …show more content…
To live beyond the threshold of identity, to do so in the name of a peace that has not yet occurred but that is infinitely possible- this is exhilarating, necessary, and within reach” (117). Through Amu Fakhry’s laughter at Willow’s father’s galibayya or relatives attempting to speak foreign languages, America and Egypt bonded to become a combination of cultures that Willow can finally recognize as home. In multiple ways, Willow and Omar’s marriage has come to symbolize that “immutable integrity” in itself. Without titles like “Egyptian” or “American”, humans are capable of loving other cultures regardless of the media’s warped portrayals of other nations. Willow’s inspired style and tone demonstrate how astonishingly incorrect the media is. Not all Middle Easterners are barbaric just as not all Americans are intolerant and Wilson passionately finds simply living as a human rather than a human classified by geography and culture as “exhilarating, necessary, and within reach” because she has. Willow’s marriage to Omar is not merely about love, but also “’immutable integrity’” because after living in a world of fighting, hatred, and exclusion, Willow’s family and Omar’s family fall in love with a peace and mix of cultures that rise above the rules of Arab, American, eastern, and Western that is possible
The “F Word” is an essay about an Iranian girl’s struggle with finding who she is, in a foreign land known as the U.S. It acknowledges her inner struggle with an outward showing character of herself that she holds, her name. During the essay the reader learns about how the girl fights her inner feeling of wanting to fit in and her deep rooted Iranian culture that she was brought up to support. Firoozeh Dumas, the girl in the book, and also the author of the essay, uses various rhetorical tactics to aid her audience in grasping the fact that being an immigrant in the U.S. can be a difficult life. To demonstrate her true feelings to the audience as an immigrant in the U.S., she uses similes, parallelism, and even her tone of humor.
Naomi Nye was born to a German-American mother and a Palestinian-American father. However, she normally writes from her Palestinian-Arab perspective. In several of her poems within The Heath Anthology—“Ducks,” “My Father and the Figtree,” and “Where the Soft Air Lives”—Naomi Nye reminisces about her Muslim heritage and childhood as it correlates to her present identity. In addition, she incorporates the effect of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on herself and on Arab culture in her work. Ultimately, Naomi Nye’s poetic work should remain in The Heath Anthology as her style demonstrates how historical events and a deep-rooted heritage can enrich a sense of identity and culture.
Salwa, a successful banker and real estate agent, thought she wanted the American dream. It had been one of the reasons Jassim's fast and unexpected proposal years earlier in Jordan had seemed so attractive. He was in love with her and she was in love with the idea of the life he offered. She came to America as a new bride with stars and stripes in her eyes, where life was all that she'd dreamt it would be. Easing effort...
Maryse Conde’s novel Segu tells the vivid story of a family hurtled into the chaos of a rapidly changing world. Conde does a phenomenal job of putting readers into the mindset of her many colorful characters allowing readers access to thoughts and motivations behind these characters’ actions. The story is exceptionally intricate and yet the individual stories all feel interconnected back to the Traore family who are the focus point of the novel. Various themes all play a part in the telling of Segu. From religion to the transatlantic slave trade, from family to commerce, all these themes come together to form a story that ultimately spans cultures, continents, and centuries. This paper will be focusing on the themes of family and religion.
The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson is an emotional, yet thought provoking memoir that holds the reader's attention from start to finish. Simplistic clarity, and honest wit is used to tell her story while demonstrating the complexity of the world, and the problematic way different cultures see each other. Although at times I found it to be anti-climactic her message still shone through and left me thinking about it long after. This memoir allows the reader to feel as though they are on Wilson’s journey, and succeeds in spreading a message that needs to be told.
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
Employing irony, dark humor, and personal anecdotes, Sayed Kashua wrote a fictional narrative that explores the politics of identity, masquerading, and crossing in a region undergoing a nationality crisis. Language, culture and history, too, play pivotal roles in the varying levels of social and cultural capital in a society with a dominating judaistic force. In navigating both real and imagined Israeli communities, Kashua and his main protagonist in Dancing Arabs find themselves trapped in an identity paradox: they are too Arab to be considered Jewish, yet too Jewish to be considered Arab.
Joyce, James. "Araby." 1914. Literature and Ourselves. Henderson, Gloria, ed. Boston, Longman Press. 2009. 984-988.
Eventually Lamis realizes all the things she still loves about her Iraqi culture and she stops thinking that “being Arab was an obstacle in her life,” (125). She eventually even thinks she is silly for trying to decided between two different cultures and two different societies, when she now knows she can blend the two. She realizes how severe it was to give up her culture, “Had she really once considered substituting these for others and doing away with her heritage, no longer seeing, hearing or speaking, and consequently ceasing to breathe?”
...m Innocence to Insight: 'Araby' as an Iniation Story." Chapter 10. The St. Martin's Guide to Writing. By Rise Axlerod and Charles Cooper. Vol. 8. N.p.: n.p., 2008. 536-38. Print.
Nothing teaches us better than literature to see, in ethnic and cultural differences, the richness of the human patrimony, and to prize those differences as manifestation humanity’s multi-faceted creativity. Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure, of course; but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, on our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in a relationship that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.
Living in Israel, Saeed is constantly swayed by the will to live by shadowing his Palestinian identity or by showing his nationality to appear trustworthy to his comrades. Ironically, it is when Saeed finally reveals his identification with Palestine and is imprisoned that he is awakened to a true feeling of national loyalty and subsequent freedom (Habibi, 132). Habibi uses this literary picture to show how, even in times of conflict and oppression, the greatest individuality and nationalism will
Hamid’s fiction deals with varied issues: from infidelity to drug trade in the subcontinent and, in the light of contemporary developments, about Islamic identity in a globalised world. His first novel, Moth Smoke (2000) won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2000. His other novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Decibel Award and the South Bank Award for Literature. This book serves as a testament to his elegant style as he deftly captures the straining relationship between America and Pakistan.
Abstract: Sultan Hassan mosque is important in Egypt and the Muslim world mosques, where it is characterized by a special architectural style. In this mosque was to identify the main reasons that led to the deterioration of the limestone Moreover, mosque of Sultan Hassan is exposed to the influence of ground water caused by sewage. The study environments, petrographic and the work of the chemical analyzes by X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence as by scanning electron microscope was limestone study by imaging and analysis of the limestone core component samples of the mosque were taking nondestructive samples to building of the mosque by taking swabs, petry dishes and Adhesive tapes bacterial isolates for study and examination and defined
2 The novel deals with the transformation of the protagonist Feroza which unveils her experiences. Feroza, a Pakistani girl, belonging to the Parsee community, shifted to the United States by her family to make her modern in approach and outlook. Furthermore, the experience of Diaspora can be seen both as empowering, as well as disempowering for the women of color in the novel. The locations often demand contrasting codes of conduct resulting in often hybrid and conflictual tendencies among the individuals in Diaspora. Feroza begins to assimilate the independence of mind and spirit and sturdy self-confidence offered by the New World, which is alien to her Third World experience and sheltered upbringing. Under the influence of her American roommate Jo, Feroza completely adapts an American life style. She acts, walks and dresses like American girl. The shy and conservative Feroza turns into a confident and self-assertive girl. Feroza begins to assimilate the independence of mind and spirit and sturdy self-confidence offered by the New World, which is alien to her Third World experience and sheltered upbringing. Feroza feels David is perfect for her and their love is eternal, but as time passes she finds a change in their relationship. It enables her to think about her life seriously and to decide about her future with confidence. But though Feroza believes that underneath the religious and cultural differences, she and David are alike, her mother does not think so. When Feroza discloses her intention of marrying David, Zareen rushes to America to prevent this unsuitable marriage. She brings money to buy off David. She tries to explain to Feroza that by marrying David she would cut herself off from her family and religion. She would never be allowed to enter the Parsi places of worship,