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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
This book was good but a little confusing. It seemed all over the place to me. I’m still not sure why the author described herself as growing up Jewish just because she had Jewish friends. I hope this book has an impact on Zionism and makes readers realize the necessity of a Palestinian state.
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I read an uncorrected proof of this book that I got through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. It's based on a solo show that Najla Said -- Edward Said's daughter -- says she performs mostly for high school and college students. That's apparent in the simplistic tone of the book, which makes it seem like it must be targeted at a young (teen) audience. Looking past that, the narrative is about 3/4 humble-bragging with a few paragraphs expressing guilt over the author's privilege. It's just not a compelling memoir.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
If I had known this book was going to be so fascinating I would have not let it sit on my shelf so long
It feels like Najla wrote this more for herself, as her own way of processing her personal history, than for an audience. A lot of the book is about her experiences in middle and high school, feeling like a misfit and developing anorexia. Not to belittle her experience, but I didn't find it very interesting reading about a teenager who didn't fit in: her experience of not fitting in didn't come across as unique. At the end of the book, she does acknowledge that some it comes across as whiny. It felt like she ran out of energy when she got to the interesting parts of the book, and she didn't devote nearly as much detail to the parts of the book that interested me - how she finally embraced her Arab-American identity, how she integrated Arab culture into her own life. As a fan of her father, Edward Said, I was hoping she would talk more about how his ideas played out in her life, but I suppose that if you grow up with those ideas, you probably take them for granted or don't realize how different your experience of those ideas is from everyone else's.
I certainly don't regret reading this - it did provide a few interesting insights into Arab-American culture. But the interesting parts could have been distilled down to a few chapters, instead of an entire book.
Lots of great antics getting to know Najla Said, what living with her famous father was like, her identity crises, her second gen immigrant story (which is to say not an immigrant), problems growing up that were unique to her and many that are universal to all who have not fit in somewhere.
Najla Said is a Palestinian-Lebanese growing up in New York City. Her father is a famous Palestinian scholar and, unbeknownst to me, the reason we no longer use the word "Oriental" to describe Asian people.
Najla grew up confused and troubled with her identity. Looking for Palestine is her memoir, which describes her childhood to present day and how she has dealt with her experience of never quite fitting in.
I had high hopes for this memoir, but was unimpressed. It felt a tad whiny at times, and not quite original. It almost felt like reading a diary, and I wanted Najla to be stronger than she was. The feeling was: we all feel like we don't fit in at times, can you move on and mature now? Which is undoubtedly harsh, but how I felt.
Najla grew up confused and troubled with her identity. Looking for Palestine is her memoir, which describes her childhood to present day and how she has dealt with her experience of never quite fitting in.
I had high hopes for this memoir, but was unimpressed. It felt a tad whiny at times, and not quite original. It almost felt like reading a diary, and I wanted Najla to be stronger than she was. The feeling was: we all feel like we don't fit in at times, can you move on and mature now? Which is undoubtedly harsh, but how I felt.
An intimate, endearing, and ultimately disappointing memoir. This is the story of a privileged girl who felt excluded for not feeling white enough and jewish enough. Her catharsis is not based on renouncing or moving beyond privilege, or whiteness or jewishness, but by finding her own way to assert her right to these things. This book is a declaration - not of belonging to Palestine or to humanity, but of belonging to the Upper West Side.
Her father found his identity by embracing the exilic and the humanistic, and located himself "geographically" within the abstract hope of "the university." Najla, on the other hand, sought and found her identity as an Arab Jew in Manhattan. In response to feelings of being lost and being "othered," she grounds herself among *specific* others, successful others - not among otherness in general and not, as in her father's tradition, moving through and beyond it entirely. Instead of embracing a process or a positionality, she takes a firm position. She does so with this book. It works her way out of her father's shadow by staking a claim to fame - as proxy for success. This is sad. Sadder still, is that she does so on the tautological basis of being famous itself- by exploiting her father's shadow.
Yet there is hope. The author is only midway through her life. A final version of her memoirs might still have a different ending.
Her father found his identity by embracing the exilic and the humanistic, and located himself "geographically" within the abstract hope of "the university." Najla, on the other hand, sought and found her identity as an Arab Jew in Manhattan. In response to feelings of being lost and being "othered," she grounds herself among *specific* others, successful others - not among otherness in general and not, as in her father's tradition, moving through and beyond it entirely. Instead of embracing a process or a positionality, she takes a firm position. She does so with this book. It works her way out of her father's shadow by staking a claim to fame - as proxy for success. This is sad. Sadder still, is that she does so on the tautological basis of being famous itself- by exploiting her father's shadow.
Yet there is hope. The author is only midway through her life. A final version of her memoirs might still have a different ending.