Amnesty Int'l Review of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism

“The impact of Orientalism, I began to see, was everywhere. Our Arab community had a plethora of cultural and political organizations that put on musical concerts, festivals, banquets, and a range of political organizations that focused on civil rights issues and homeland politics. And yet, there were no resources for dealing with difficult issues in our families and communities” (p.4). It is this silence on what happens in the diaspora and the “bifurcated existence” of her generation of Arab Americans that motivated Nadine Naber to make the Arab American community in San Francisco’s Bay Area the subject of her scholarly research. In Arab America, she undertakes an exploration of the articulation of “Arabness” in America as it evolved in middle-class Arab American families and antiimperialist social movements within the community.