In Mixtape (2021), Beverly Moody, a middle school student in Spokane, WA, finds a mixtape that her parents made. Beverly’s parents were sixteen when they had her, and two years later they died in a car accident. The film centers around Beverly tracking down all of the songs on the mixtape, since it has been destroyed and all she has is the track listing, … Read More “What are you?”: Part IV
+ arab american literature, identity, Malaka Gharib, mohja kahf, syria, the girl in the tangerine scarf, toufic el rassi
Recently, someone told me about an exercise that a professor had his class do during seminary. The professor told the class to talk to someone within their social sphere who they knew but did not really have a relationship with apart from maybe a passing acquaintance. The students had to, before speaking with the person, write down their preconceived notions about the individual. After … Read More “What are you?”: Part III
Last post, I began looking at the ways that we place individuals into categories, separating them from ourselves, and how this affects the ways that we think about others. Over the next few posts, I want to continue that discussion by focusing on Khadra Shamy in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf and the ways that her need to place individuals into … Read More “What are you?”: Part II
In my Multicultural American Literature course this semester, we are reading Malaka Gharib’s graphic memoir I Was Their American Dream. As I was constructing my syllabus for the course, I was looking for graphic memoirs, and I came across Gharib’s book. I scanned a few pages on Amazon and though, “This is great.” So, I ordered it, read it, and assigned it for the course. I reached out to … Read More Conversation with Malaka Gharib
+ A Very Large Expanse of Sea, adrian tomine, comics, graphic memoir, graphic novels, identity, scott mccloud, Tahereh Mafi, the loneliness of the long-distance cartoonist
Before I even picked it up and started reading, Adrian Tomine’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist grabbed my attention, specifically because of it tangible, tactile features which mirror a sketch book. Of course when I started reading, various things stood out. One such instance occurs when Tomine starts to have chest pains and is carrying his daughter up the stairs. During this sequence, … Read More Identity in Adrian Tomine “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist”
Interminable Rambling 