Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian American Youth after 9/11

by Thea Renda Abu El-Haj

Unsettled Belonging tells the stories of young Palestinian Americans as they navigate and construct lives as American citizens. Following these youth throughout their school days, Thea Abu El-Haj examines citizenship as lived experience, dependent on various social, cultural, and political memberships. For them, she shows, life is characterized by a fundamental schism between their sense of transnational belonging and the exclusionary politics of routine American nationalism that ultimately cast them as impossible subjects.
           
Abu El-Haj explores the school as the primary site where young people from immigrant communities encounter the central discourses about what it means to be American. She illustrates the complex ways social identities are bound up with questions of belonging and citizenship, and she details the processes through which immigrant youth are racialized via everyday nationalistic practices. Finally, she raises a series of crucial questions about how we educate for active citizenship in contemporary times, when more and more people’s lives are shaped within transnational contexts. A compelling account of post-9/11 immigrant life, Unsettled Belonging is a steadfast look at the disjunctures of modern citizenship. 

Genres: Anthropology, Education

264 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2015

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great academic book about Palestinian American youth living in the United States after 9/11. Thea Renda Abu El-Haj does a wonderful and thorough job of writing about several important topics, such as how Palestinian American kids and teens navigate their identities both as Palestinians and as Americans. She highlights the racism they face from their teachers as well as how everyday nationalism contributes to stereotypical and violent assumptions about Arab individuals and Arab Americans. What I most loved about this book is how Thea Renda Abu El-Haj interviews Palestinian American kids and teens and highlights how they practice resistance of racism in the United States and how they cultivate pride in their identities as Palestinians. Amidst the horrific ongoing genocide in Palestine now it was heartwarming to read these narratives that portrayed Palestinian American youth in a more three-dimensional light.

Given that it’s an academic text sometimes the writing is a little dry though I found the content important and meaningful regardless.

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

GORGEOUS book

[Edrick Willie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think my new go-to academic recommendation (if such a thing exists).

[Si Squires-Kasten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapters 3 and 4 ("Imagining America in an Age of Empire" and "Everyday Nationalism at Regional High"), which deconstruct the liberal multicultural national imaginary and show its relationship to overtly violent nationalism, are absolutely essential. The rest can be skimmed or skipped.

[moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up. really a great book, just at times felt like i was reading the same thing i had already read in previous chapters over and over. its definitely thorough, and that repetition means each chapter can be read independently without getting lost even while each one supports the others.