Why women in Middle eastern literature?
My name is Kylie Decker and I became really interested in this culture after reading Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. The story was very moving and it was one of my first exposures to reading about the Middle East. I thought why had I not read anything about this culture before? Perhaps because there are not that many books out there addressing the culture or that my teachers never exposed me to this until now. Reading the books, and reading Persepolis, I got a glimpse into what women were going through in that culture during those time periods. Seeing how women from other cultures live, feel and act intrigued me, since I am a woman as well. Shortly after I began to look for young adult literature where the Middle Eastern Women are the main character. Their lives are different from that of my own and that inspired me to learn more about them and to understand their culture and religion. I hope you enjoy the books I have found!
(There are some spoilers on the book pages so that I was able to do a full analysis!)
(There are some spoilers on the book pages so that I was able to do a full analysis!)
A way to judge books
These criteria help to judge whether this book is a good representation of a disability, but can be used in the similar way to judge the women of the Middle East, and to help decide if it is worthwhile to use in the classroom. It is important to have books that are not creating negative stereotypes and will not cause the reader to thing negatively of the culture. We want our students to be exposed to a variety of genres, and different perspectives, so that they do not know just the 'single story.' In looking at the books I chose for this project, I used these criteria as a guide to help me decide what parts were good and which were negative.
The ten criteria are:
Blaska, Joan. "Disabilities Studies Quarterly." Disabilities Studies Quarterly. 24.1 (2004): n. page. Web. 20 Nov. 2012. <http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/866/1041>.
The ten criteria are:
- Promotes empathy not pity.
- Depicts acceptance not ridicule.
- Emphasizes success rather than, or in addition, to failure.
- Promotes positive images of persons with disabilities or illness.
- Assists children in gaining accurate understanding of the disability or illness.
- Demonstrates respect for persons with disabilities or illness.
- Promotes attitude of "one of us" not "one of them."
- Uses language which stresses person first, disability second philosophy, i.e. Jody who is blind.
- Describes the disability or person with disabilities or illness as realistic (i.e., not subhuman or superhuman.)
- Illustrates characters in a realistic manner.
Blaska, Joan. "Disabilities Studies Quarterly." Disabilities Studies Quarterly. 24.1 (2004): n. page. Web. 20 Nov. 2012. <http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/866/1041>.