Outsiders and onlookers writing about culture

Zvulun, Ravid. (1960).The Yishuv in Palestine in the 19th Century as Reflected in its Hebrew Literature. (in the Library: DS 125 .R37x 1976.)

"The early settlements in Palestine have been studied and described in great detail from different points of view: economic, sociological, cultural, and religious. All this literature was written by "outsiders" and "onlookers" not by active participants. However, there has been no research in the Hebrew literature of this period created in Palestine itself as a reflection of the life of early settlers and their own comments on their experience"(1). This is from the dissertation's introduction; the actual text is written in Hebrew...

The rest of the introduction seems a little bias, but I wanted to share this information with my classmates, since we just talked about this concept yesterday, during our final class period.
I'm wondering if an author who is not an onlooker/outsider has anything interesting to write about. What do you write about if you're not critiquing a social order, idea, or status quo?

Rooftops

Although Mahbod Seraji's Rooftops of Tehran is at times incredibly corny, it portrays the experiences of a first love splendidly. Watching Pasha's shyness change into daring and blatant flirting was exciting; the reader watches loves transformation as we have all experienced. The one where we can hardly look at the person we desire, and then later develop an awesome sense of self-confidence and tell them everything we feel. At least that's been my experience... the story made me nostalgic.

In regards to his choice for how to incorporate Farsi into his English text, I was slightly disappointed. I prefer when authors write the word in the text and add a footnote of its English translation. Seraji, however, uses an awkward style where he uses the Farsi word followed by a comma and a translation within the sentence. For example on p. 27, "He hates the Shah and the mullahs, the educated religious officials." This disrupts the flow and naturalness of the narrator. Pasha would never say anything like that unless maybe he was actually telling us the story knowing that we don't know Farsi. This technique is used throughout the text and just doesn't seem to fit.

I enjoyed reading Rooftops of Tehran for historic reasons, too. I think it provides a good sense for why the revolution happened. Seraji also offers an understanding for cultural identifiers, such as funeral traditions, through his novel.

Since I work in the Library's acquisitions department I always see the titles before they're on the shelf. Today we received a book request from a professor here at WMU. It's titled When a Woman Aspires; it's author is Sultan Al Zaabi. The title made me curious so I "googled" it, and found this description: "When a Woman Aspires’ talks about one of the most important issues not only in the Emirati society but throughout the Gulf region, The setting of the novel revolves around an energetic, smart, persistent and ambitious Emirati woman seeking success. However, the woman’s ambition clashes with the ideologies of others around her, largely those of men who believe that a woman belongs to her home rather than the workplace."
I feel this is relevant to our class' discussion, and similar to the texts/films we have been looking at recently.
(p.s. funny that the woman on the cover is blond and is not wearing a vail)

The Pistachio Seller - another addition to my booklist?

http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/fall-2009/pistachio-seller.html

Persepolis Response

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic narrative Persepolis critically contemplates the consequences of war and its trauma. She presents the historical events of the Iran-Iraq war, and with that describes the way she and her family were immediately affected by it. It is her simple choice and the act of creating this graphic narrative that makes a critical statement about these historical events. Words can explain, while visuals often have more power to stir; words inform, while visuals describe. When hearing or reading about a historical event through words, the listener will know what happened. However, when visuals are added, a higher level of understanding is triggered. By using the form of the graphic novel, an author can achieve both of these outcomes in one work. One traumatic event in Marjane’s life, depicted on page 142 of Persepolis however, needs no dialogue to clarify the pictures. In this scene Marjane and her mother walk past their neighbor’s just-bombed home, when Marjane sees a piece of jewelry in the rubble of the home. The narration says that “the bracelet was still attached” (Persepolis 142). However, when flipping a few pages back, where the reader first meets Marjane’s neighbor, it is clear who that bracelet belongs to.

The story in Persepolis is one of collective loss in Marjan's family. Not only do Marjan and her family miss each other when Marjan goes to school in Europe, but there is another sense of loss that Marjan feels because she is not suffering from the same experiences that her family is enduring through the war. According to Kimberly Wedeven Segall, collective loss means "that not everyone has a similar experience but, rather, that … stories of violence pass between parents and their children in a way that embeds family groups within a collective bond of loss, distinct from an individual level of traumatic symptoms and personal grief. This loss, with all its intergenerational dynamics, [Segall believes] is part of an unresolved mourning or melancholy” (p. 38). She is separated not only from her direct family, but also from her culture and ultimately her family history. When she lives in Vienna, Marjane tries to assimilate to the European teen-culture by smoking, changing her clothes and hair, and even “manag[ing] to deny [her] nationality” (Persepolis 195). Since she is separated from the social forces that have made her who she is, she feels a sense of isolation and is not being true to who she really is. Marjane forgot her family’s history while in Europe in order to cope with her own experiences of trying to assimilate into a different culture.

Persepolis is a memoir and therefore describes violent events that were especially traumatic to Marjane-those that must have had a great impact on her, growing up. One, for example, is the concept of the boys with plastic keys on necklaces given to them at school. These keys represent their access into heaven. The boys are recruited for the front where “thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks” (Persepolis 102). Marjane Satrapi has the power, through her graphic narrative, to pick which events she finds significant in the defining of the Iran-Iraq war.
Reference:

Segall, Kimberly Wedeven. “Melancholy ties: Intergenerational Loss and Exile in Persepolis.”

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East Vol.28, No.1 (2008): 38-49.