All American Yemeni Girls

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All American Yemeni Girls is a book that allowed me as a reader to step into the lives of a group of people that, to an ignorant mind, are so different that people would have a difficult time understanding or accepting them. Or for others, it may be a book that is just in the right ballpark for their lives. Nevertheless, there are various correlations in the book to what we’ve learned from our subject matter in class which allowed me to see numerous connections in the midst of diversity. Three of the core essential themes seen throughout the book and our class readings are topics of gender, immigration, and religion. Gender is not only a substantial theme in All American Yemeni Girls, but also in our course’s assigned material. In our earlier readings, we learned that in the colonial school era grammar schools and preparation for college was only open to males. Girls always had terminal education. The higher education schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. were initially male only. The same circumstance falls true for the males in the book. Sarroub states, “Boys had more freedom of movement farther away from the home, because parents tended to be more lenient with them”. The conditions may be different, but even so, the boys already had a step up and did not have to uphold the same “position” or ranking as the girls discussed in this book. But research shows, contrarily, that both genders can concurrently grow through educational attainment. Likewise, Queen Latifah’s “Unity” music video was made about 16 years ago, but its significance of empowering women still holds value today. Sarroub exhibits how inadequately the girls were sometimes treated by the men of their own society. They were spied on, told on, and treated like objects or things at times. In Queen Latifah’s video, she raps about women’s rights and how women need to stand up and speak out for

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