community and unable to come to terms with being Arab Americans. Faced with an unwelcoming neighborhood and a difficult childhood, the Rammoud sisters understand, at an early age, their positioning as racial and cultural others in Euclid.
Through Jemorah's and Melvina's childhood recollections, readers of Arabian Jazz are asked to recognize the contradictory and often impossible task of achieving authentic Americanness. As a young schoolgirl, Jemorah is taunted and teased by her classmates. These episodes in her childhood mark Jemorah, making her aware of her difference:
The other children taunted Jem because of her strange name, her darker skin. They were relentless. running wild. children of the worst poverty, the school bus the only place they had …show more content…
They asked her obscene questions, searched for her weakness, the chink that would let them into her strangeness. She never let them.
She learned how to close her mind, how to disappear in her seat. how to blur the sound of searing voices chanting her name. (92-3)
The experience of being labeled and dismissed marks Jemorah for the rest of her life. Unable to defend herself, except by shutting out her tormenters' voices,
Jemorah IS stunned by her unwillingness to "let herself remember" the pain inflicted upon her by the children on the bus (93). lemorah's ability to identify her
"strange name" and "darker skin" as markers that set her apart from the other
children on the bus familiarizes readers with the ways in which racism is
experienced by minorities in the United States. lemorah's inability to face her
tormenters leads to her recognition that there "was no one to bear witness" to her
pain (93). Instead of confronting her tormenters, Jemorah chooses to accept the
truth of the children's claims and comes to the conclusion that "those children
Through Jemorah's and Melvina's childhood recollections, readers of Arabian Jazz are asked to recognize the contradictory and often impossible task of achieving authentic Americanness. As a young schoolgirl, Jemorah is taunted and teased by her classmates. These episodes in her childhood mark Jemorah, making her aware of her difference:
The other children taunted Jem because of her strange name, her darker skin. They were relentless. running wild. children of the worst poverty, the school bus the only place they had …show more content…
They asked her obscene questions, searched for her weakness, the chink that would let them into her strangeness. She never let them.
She learned how to close her mind, how to disappear in her seat. how to blur the sound of searing voices chanting her name. (92-3)
The experience of being labeled and dismissed marks Jemorah for the rest of her life. Unable to defend herself, except by shutting out her tormenters' voices,
Jemorah IS stunned by her unwillingness to "let herself remember" the pain inflicted upon her by the children on the bus (93). lemorah's ability to identify her
"strange name" and "darker skin" as markers that set her apart from the other
children on the bus familiarizes readers with the ways in which racism is
experienced by minorities in the United States. lemorah's inability to face her
tormenters leads to her recognition that there "was no one to bear witness" to her
pain (93). Instead of confronting her tormenters, Jemorah chooses to accept the
truth of the children's claims and comes to the conclusion that "those children