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)