Review: Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism

In Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism, Nadine Naber traces the historical, political, and community-building experiences of Arab Americans living in the San Francisco Bay area with impressive attention to the cultural, religious, and generational heterogeneity of her interlocutors. An important aspect of this timely ethnography is the fact that Naber compellingly demonstrates that the transition of Arab Americans from “model minority” to “problem minority” predates 9/11, a date now associated with the genesis of anti-Arab attitudes and heightened Orientalism. This is critical to Naber’s analysis, as we get to understand that “Articulating Arabness” in the Bay area was firmly grounded in two main instances of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East: the ongoing U.S. support of Israeli militaristic control over Palestine, the occupied territories, and Palestinians living in Israel and the first Gulf War. More significantly, these forms of U.S. international imperialism are always-already complementary to domestic racialization practices that criminalize people of color more generally.