Secure A Copy I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir Drafted By Malaka Gharib Ready In Digital Version
quirky, funny amp sweet memoir about the complexity of defining amp achieving the everelusive “American Dream, ”
Gharib recounts her childhood spent in California amp summers spent in Egypt, trying to find similarities between/a balance of her Filipino, Egyptian, and American cultural identities.
She explores her idolization of whiteness, of “American” behavior, We see her grow up, go to college, fall in love, and reflect on the sacrifices her parents made to get her here.
I love how Gharib plays with form, creating minizines, bingo sheets, paper dolls, and flash cards with her art.
There are obviously a lot of similarities between this amp her other memoir, It Wont Always Be Like This, but I honestly think I enjoyed this more I owe that to getting to see more of her life in the states amp as she got older but you NEED to read both, IMO!.
a beautiful, honest, and sweet tribute to her egyptianfilipinoamerican family : everyone should read!!!! Malaka Monica, but with an L has a Filipino mother who is Catholic and an Egyptian father who is Muslim.
She talks about her childhood, growing a teen navigating the question of "what are you" and being American with such a diverse background.
It's sometimes difficult to know where you fit in, but Gharib uses humor to get at the heart of what it means to be anything! I liked the playful artwork and I felt this worked well as a graphic novel.
Very cute and sweet! What a fabulous graphic memoir of growing up as the daughter of a MuslimEgyptian father and CatholicFilipino mother.
Though they ultimately divorce and Malaka's father moves back to Egypt, both of their cultural and religious heritages influence Malaka's formative years.
As she navigates an extremely diverse population in her California high school, Malaka finds herself obsessed with all things white and this book digs into how that influenced her future.
Insightful, funny, and full of heart, this memoir of being the daughter of immigrants
doesn't skimp on smart art.
The illustrations are light, and they make use of the red, white, and blue palate in a savvy way some reviews seem to miss this clever nod to America in the color scheme, but it's very clearly intentional.
This is one to read alongside sitelinkAlmost American Girl and sitelinkThe Complete Persepolis and sitelinkTina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary, among other graphic memoirs of the teen firstgenerationAmerican experience.
Awesome! What a book about growing up in a cultural / religious / nationality diverse family and how your own and other peoples views of diversity change and differ according to context and time.
Nothing raunchy in the book but the identity complexity probably better for middle grade and up, A very special book. Next to New Kid my favourite MS GN for this year Gharib creates a cute and amusing graphic memoir about being the child of immigrants, a Catholic Filipino mother and a Muslim Egyptian father, as she tracks her transition from desiring assimilation into white American culture, to feelings of rejection, to finding her own identity by acknowledging, integrating and melding all the diverse cultures that went into the creation of the woman she is today.
Fun with a side of inspiring,
One quirk: Due to a limited color palette, apparently half of all people in the world are redheads.
Another third have shades of blue and a few have dark brown, It was slightly more distracting than I would have thought, how i feel after reading this gt The author is a child of a Catholic Filipino mother and a Muslim Egyptian father.
Only in America! One of my fave things about this country is that it's not a punchline to a joke, but a thing that can happen here.
Representation matters, and this would be a powerful book for those who need one like it.
This graphic memoir is about the joys and tribulations of being a mixed race/mixed religion child of immigrant parents.
As it's written for a young adult audience, the comic gently explores some of the tensions of assimilation and trying to find where you belong.
The art is cute, and the tone kept light and positive, This would probably work better for younger readers, or those not exposed to some of the themes covered here.
Update. Here's the full review: sitelink blogspot .
Such an important memoir! It really looks at what it means to grow up in a multiethnic home.
I loved that the author not only explored her own culture and upbrining, but also how living in America influenced thoughts that she had about herself and being a person of color.
Ill definitely be doing a full review on this so stay on the look out! so cute! Excellent graphic memoir about the authors experiences as the Americanborn daughter of immigrant parents from the Philippines and Egypt.
Highly recommend! I read a sample of this book a few months ago on The Nib and knew I was going to enjoy it.
Malaka Gharib draws in a loose, expressive style with a limited color palette that perfectly fits with this short but satisfying memoir.
Gharib tells how each of her parents came to California as immigrants her mother from the Philippians, her father from Egypt.
When they married and had their daughter, they thought they were on the road to the American Dream.
But the marriage didn't last, and Malaka ended with halfsiblings on both sides of a family scattered across the globe.
She talks about her elementary and high school days as one of many kids from mixed cultures in the Southern California town of Cerritos.
Her classmates there were IndianAmerican, TaiwaneseAmerican, IranianAmerican, JapaneseAmerican, PakistaniAmerican, MexicanAmerican, KoreanAmerican, PalestinianAmerican and more, Landing at the extremely white Syracuse University for college took some adjusting, Gharib includes recipes, paper dolls, a tearout single page zine, quizzes and quotes from friends along with the narrative of spending summers in Cairo with her father, years dealing migroagressions while working in Washington DC, and meeting the man who would eventually become her husband.
I liked it and wished it was longer, I appreciated the art the bold choice of going with "American colors" worked for me and made the book pop and also felt that the experimentation with format wasn't inyourface but a seamless part of the whole.
The book has both a dressup doll and a minizine, I thought that was cool :
I realized only after reading how much of a relief it was to read something focused on immigration to the US and parents, and not have it be about how embarrassed the author is about their weird parents.
I am a currentgen immigrant and I guess one of those weird parents,
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library A delightfully illustrated, yet straightforward memoir, about the narrator's mixed heritage and the sense of displacement she felt growing up in the U.
S. with her Filipino mother and spending summers in Egypt with her dad, It was a quick read, and when I finished it, something amiss for me, I found the author's heritage unique, but nothing new was explored in her book, There wasn't anything necessarily surprising or profound about the narrative she told, The sense of feeling neither here or there is not new, I hoped for something more, However, I do think that every once in a while there's something to be appreciated about a book that is simply written, with a lot of heart and vulnerability, especially when it's about a woman making her own way and owning it.
An interesting graphic memoir very sincere and funny in a quite a few places, really well written by Malaka Gharib, a young American woman with parents who immigrated from Filipins mother and Egypt father.
What a combination, Christian and Arab, The parents divorced, her father returned to Egypt and her mother brought her up, mortgaged their home to pay for Malaka's University.
. . Still Malaka visited her father in Egypt every summer holiday, learned a lot of useful and entertaining things.
. .
In a way, the whole story reminds of "Persepolis" an excellent Iranian memoir, still this book is different, excellent, well natured and very positive.
Also in my view in Persepolis graphics were unforgettable outstanding, still Malaka's story is original an unique, Loved it.
A quick read, very enjoyable, amusing, really good, Loved this graphic memoir so much, especially Gharib's reflections on meeting her husband and merging her two cultures, Filipino and Egyptian, and his white Southern American culture.
This book is so funny and thoughtfully observed and an absolute delight to read, Malaka Gharib approaches uncomfortable issues in this short biographical piece,
First she shows how her parents look to America for the things that they want from it including their perception of the "American Dream" for their daughter.
They don't understand or value the social and cultural freedom Malaka their daughter needs to achieve their dream.
For Malaka freedom requires leaving behind many elements of the past her parents they hold dear,
At school Malaka meets other first generation Americans with identities based on their parents' or their home country identity.
Along with her peer group, she develops a preference for "white", "White" is shown in images that represent the seeming wealth, fun, freedom from worries or just assimilation of the people assumed to be "Americans".
At college, where "everyone" is "white", she finds that "where are you from" doesn't get the same response that it did in high school.
Once graduated and settled on the opposite coast of her family, she realizes the norm she has violated: she should return to be with the family.
To live the American dream, she has to be away from them, They do not understand this and it is difficult for her,
This is not your typical immigrant family: Her parents are PhilippineEgyptian CatholicMuslim and they divorce however, this is a universal story.
Malaka Gharib uses the graphic genre well to tell her story, I liked it and thought it had many things going for it, Most importantly that the main character is relatable and funny which will go a long way with the teen audience it is intended for.
I quite enjoyed reading about her upbringing,
However, I loathe the term "microaggression" also trigger, white privilege, implicit bias, you get me so when she does a page with a "microaggressions" bingo card I just had to sigh.
In a different format, I would've liked to see her delve more into the fact that she initially felt marginalized that nobody asked her about her ethnic background in college it was such a huge part of her identity that she wanted to talk about it but then she schools the reader on why asking someone where they are from could be considered an aggressive act.
Perhaps like most things in life, this comes down to this thing we call "individuals" and not groups.
Some people want to talk about their backgrounds and others do not, Some people ask this question because they are genuinely curious about where somebody is from or what culture they grewup in and some people are just rude.
That's why I hate these blanket termslet's look at people as individuals, not colors, or gender or ethnic background.
Radical, I know.
I think her whole novel was pretty well demonstrative that America is still a melting pot with lots of backgrounds and religions and that ultimately you can be an American while still loving and embracing many parts of your ethnic heritage.
It was a positive novel, NPR correspondent Malaka Gharib's graphic memoir about being mixed race, I work with a lot of students who similarly have mixed backgrounds, so this did not seem all that remarkable to me, but it was fine.
She's the child of immigrants, a Catholic Filipino mother and a Muslim Egyptian father, grew up summering with Dad in Egypt, speaks both Tagalog and Arabic.
Will appeal to folks who are similar mixed, A positive tale, maybe appealing to YA audiences more, Required reading for every nonimmigrant, Especially the chart on microaggressions, Gharib is the child of one parent who is FilipinoAmerican, and one parent who is Egyptian, I loved reading Gharib's thoughts on the cultural differences between Filipino, Egyptian, and American cultures,
They illustrate their story in a style which matches what you see on the cover image.
A limited color palette, lines with some whimsy, They vary their panel layout a lot, including sidebar pages titled things like "The Problem with "What Are You"
Their personal story has a lot to teach lots of people from lots of backgrounds.
The story is engagingly told and relatable,
This is great!
Read with:
sitelink Almost American Girl
sitelink It Ain't So Awful, Falafel
I'm Ok by sitelink Patti Kim
sitelink Duran Duran, Imelda Marcos, and Me
.
. . and a bunch more from my graphicmemoir shelf, .