Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States
By Evelyn Shakir
1997 Evelyn Shakir
Praeger Publishers
88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
ISBN: 0-275-95672-7 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0-275-95672-5 (Paperback - As Pictured Right)
Bint Arab is a good book to help you understand Arab American women. It helps you to gain insight into the traditional Arab culture and it's modern evolution in America. Both Christian and Muslim Arabs are discussed in the book but the book is not as diverse as I had thought it would be. On reading the introduction I found, to my disappointment, that Evelyn Shakir focuses her research on what she refers to as Syrians meaning not only those from Syria but also from Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel or what's also referred to as Greater Syria. I had not read the introduction before purchase but from the title I assumed it would cover a little wider array of Arab women. Although Shakir claims that there is little regional difference and so there is not real need to include everyone I quite disagree. Although the Middle East in general shares in the triumphs and defeats of it's neighboring Arab nations the particular area she uses has an especially war ridden recent past and even present. This displacement is not as much a part of life for those who immigrated from places such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Quwait, etc... I felt as though the book had a little too much focus on Palestinian refugees and not enough on other immigrants. I would be more interested in hearing from women who actually wanted to leave their homes and their children. Although I feel it's important to know about the Palestinian and Israeli conflict with the standard portayal in the book so that a more objective picture of both sides of the problem could be ascertained. I just wished Bint Arab provided a little less refugee immigrant stories and a little more of your everyday immigrant stories. Even so, I still found the book to be very interesting and it gave me a little more insight into the hardships experienced not only by immigrants in general but especially those of Arab origin. I would recommend reading this book if you would like to understand more about Arab culture and/or Arab American history as it has been well researched and is well written. The only reason I gave it three stars instead of four was that it was not what I expected from the title and jacket blurb.
The Book can be purchased from Amazon
