Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States.

Evelyn Shakir. Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997, 226 pp. Paper $22.95.

Women of Arab ancestry in America want to feel ourselves... spiritually if not physically, a part of our ethnic community, but at the same time need role models from our collective past that will, implicitly, give us permission to be oddballs.

So begins Evelyn Shakir's odyssey into the past, a journey that crosses and re-crosses the Atlantic, wanders the streets of Boston with women peddlers and follows Arab-American women into their homes, their business, their factories, their classes, their clubs, and above all, the world of their stories. Through a wealth of material gathered from clubs, diverse sources, written and oral, Shakir presents us with the history of Arab-American immigration to the USA. In her journey she carefully navigates the rocky territory of idealized nostalgia on the one hand, and Orientalist assumptions on the other. Through a personalized narrative that never lets us lose touch with the present, we delve into the past to discover the down-to-earth realities of Arab women trying to make a life for themselves in the New World.

Bint Arab is an important contribution to American Women's Studies. As the first book of its kind, it breaks now ground and is the beginning point for much future research. But outside the academic context, it is also a vital resource for all of us who wish to understand more fully the various reasons for the waves of immigration from "Syria" since the late Nineteenth century and the changing reception of the immigrant community in mainstream America.

Bint Arab traces two stages of immigration: The first wave, 1875-1925, and the second, 1945 to the present. Each wave is characterized not only by people's different reasons for immigration, but also by how that particular immigrant group saw them in relation to being American. We see their own particular perspectives, historicized and contextualized through quotes from the local press of the time. And it is in this that Shakir's book is particularly noteworthy. For, ultimately, what it focuses on is the development of stereotyping about Arabs and Arab Americans. Bint Arab moves from earlier and more positive views of the "biblical lands" to generalized suspicions of dark skinned peoples and "foreign" immigrants. It highlights the increasing rejection of the "street Arab" and specifically the peddlers, who were often Syrian. It follows the build up of "political racism" that came as an aftermath of the establishment of Israel in 1948. In this sense, what Shakir covers is the process of forming an ethnic iden tity within American culture.

"Part One: The First Wave" sets the scene for the book within the humorous sentence: "My grandmother Myriad used to eavesdrop on her chickens."(13) In almost Gracia Marquez style, we enter world whether animals can speak, dishes clamor for attention, and the clock is ruthless persistent! Gradually a picture emerges of the contrast between village life in the old country and the tenements of Boston. Skillful, Shakir takes us back to the choices available for women immigrants from the Middle East. Focusing on the peddlers, she shows us the independent spirit of those who take up peddling in order to have some control over their hours of work and the conditions of their labor. Bint Arab then explores other possibilities: the factory, the mill, opening a business, or marriage. The section on marriage is of particular interest since it depicts the way that traditions were brought over to the US and adopted to the new context. It also grapples with the issue of gender stereotypes, portraying some of the typical pr oblems encountered specifically by women while at the same time presenting numerous women who did not fit into stereotypical roles.

"Part Two: From Second Generation to Third" deals wit the increasing awareness by Arab-Americans of their ethic identity and how this identity has changed over time. In this section Shakir traces the response of Arab Americans to the increasing amount of negative stereotyping in the media, and the politicization of Arab American women as a result. Here we confront the way such stereotyping effected women's lives. Briefly and succinctly, Shakir provides us with moving examples of prejudice and racism faced by specific individuals. We see the switch in consciousness that occurs as Arab Americans shift away from more innocuous forms of promoting their culture (through social clubs) to more self-consciously educational and activist organizations working against discrimination.

In "Part Three: The Second Wave" Shakir concentrates on the new generation of immigrants, a mishmash of groups from across a large spectrum. In this section, Shakir presents the case of Palestinian immigrants, providing a cross section from various classes to show us the different kind of problems this new generation faces. Shakir then assembles a collage of women's voices from various Arab backgrounds, providing a wide spectrum of responses to questions regarding identity, particularly gender identity in a Western context. Here we see snippets of interviews which, combined, provide us an alternative image to that of the American media. While many of the voices speak of oppression in one form or the other, the oppression takes many guises, including the difficulties of being Arab or Muslim in an American context.

Overall, Shakir's approach works very well. She steers away from attempts at academic language and shuns the idea of impersonal "anthropological" discourse that dehumanizes and objectifies. Instead, she immerses herself in the narrative, communicating a genuine sense of community, an honest feel for the texture of everyday life among the varying immigrant populations. Through her, we can hear individual voices that challenge and question any attempt at homogenizing a group. At times, the collage section is too fragmented, leaving us with glimpses of women who do not materialize into flesh and blood. However, the large number of complete interviews more than make up for this small section. The portraits of women like Miriam and Hannah are unforgettable.

Perhaps the book's greatest accomplishment is that, while it constitutes a solid historical survey, it does not glorify outstanding achievement in a traditional manner. Rather, it conveys the attitude of pride and quiet determination that has marked the struggle of Arab American women as they worked to make a life for themselves in a new and sometimes alien world.

Mona Fayad is an Associate Professor of English at Salem State College, Salem, Massachusetts.