Review: This Arab Life by Amal Ghandour

I am often on the lookout for books written by authors with completely different perspectives than my own. It should come as no surprise, then, as an American, I am interested in reading works by Middle Eastern authors. I’ve said it many times and I will say it again: I believe that there are deep holes in the American school system. We don’t learn about our “enemies’” history — when I entered university for my master’s degree in France I knew next to nothing about Cuba, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Palestine…the list goes on and on. 

If you’re no stranger to the site or to our Instagram page, you know that I also love reading memoirs. This goes back to my obsession with perspectives that are not my own. So, when I was approached by someone on behalf of Bold Story Press (a women-owned and operated small press with a focus on female writers) to read and review This Arab Life by Amal Ghandour, you can imagine my excitement. It’s part memoir part historical narrative with the aim of giving a voice to the “silent” Arab generation that came of political age in the 1980s. 

I was immediately intrigued and started reading the book right away. The writing is intimate, gripping, and so wonderfully done. Not only does Amal seamlessly weave in actual historical moments with her more personal back story, but it’s also an eye-opening read into the lives of a group of young people who grew up as the Middle East begin to change into a place of political turmoil. 

She writes of a time when most of her peers were unveiled and of the slow yet steady movement toward oppression. Amal is Lebanese but grew up mostly in Jordan after her family was forced to flee their home country under political duress. She writes that “courtesy of my father's hard work, we were and remain privileged.” She was educated in the US and when she finished her studies she returned to Jordan and then Lebanon. She writes about the feeling of being a “tourist” in her own country and her yearning for a connection with her culture, family, and herself.

I found her thoughts and views on the hijab the most interesting part of the book. She writes:

“I am actually in awe of the veil. That’s why I have chosen it as my lantern in illuminating our muddy cultural terrains. Paradoxically, it is conformist and revolutionary, oppressive and liberating, spontaneous and premeditated, uncovering the fault lines that have long fractured Arab society. It both feeds and flouts every stereotype, celebrates and mocks submission, announces surrender and declares war, is a tormentor and a savior. It all depends on the woman wearing it and her circumstances…

To pigeonhole the hijab as purely an Islamist cipher is to censor all its meanings but one. And the thorniest of these meanings is that of freedom of choice in smothered societies constantly negotiating over it…the hijab, in point of fact, has been the most vivid demonstration of our struggle to engage.”

She writes that women have been “chosen by a patriarchal culture as the showcase of its resilience, its battle for honor and authenticity. We women are at once the measure of success in this ‘civilizational’ tussle with modernity and the scapegoats for failure everywhere else.” Women, “‘wear’ this role, this cover, as a burden or a privilege, as a penalty or duty; as an albatross or a pass, as a mere gesture or a statement about identity — even, increasingly, as a confident dialogue with modernity itself.”

Amal speaks for a generation of women who likely feel just as conflicted about the meaning behind the hijab and how to incorporate it into their own beliefs, convictions, and expectations — of themselves and of the societies that they live in. It’s such a contentious topic and one that is often portrayed in the media, so it’s refreshing to get a first-person’s perspective like Amal’s. She goes into many such topics throughout the book, ranging from education to free speech to activism.     

This book is an excellent view into the lives of Arabs who grew up with one foot in the past and one foot in the present. Amal clearly struggles with feelings of otherness in many aspects of her life, and she is on a quest to find a connection where she can. If you’ve ever felt like a foreigner in your home country or are interested in learning more about the Middle East from the 1970s to today, you’ll get a lot out of This Arab Life.

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