After I read the book Looking for Palestine and attended the live performance of
Palestine by Najla Said I felt that I had a clear understanding of Najla Said’s life. After I read
Looking for Palestine I felt that there was some level of connection between myself and Najla
Said. Still, I could see some significant differences between my life and hers. Overall, I felt that her experiences as a teenager are experiences that many people have felt as well as myself. Her struggle to understand her cultural identity is definitely an aspect of her life that I recognized in my own. Najla’s financial standing is a major aspect that I found to be different between her life and my own. However even though my family’s financial situation was different …show more content…
She has a mother, father, and brother, so she has the perfect family of four. In terms of family I definitely share a similarity with her because I have a family of four people as well. However, instead of having a family with a son and a daughter; my family consist of two boys, a mother and father. I feel that I also share the similarity of privilege through education, because like Najla, both of my parents are college educated. Najla’s parents seemed to be extremely financially stable and were able to pay for her and her brother to attend the best private schools, travel abroad through school trips, as well as extravagant trips abroad for family vacations. My family and I have never traveled abroad for a family vacation; still, I have been able to travel to Europe for three weeks. Also I attended private school from kindergarten up until fifth grade. I also shared some similarities with Najla in reference to the neighborhood that I lived in.
Growing up it seemed like Najla knew that she was not living in the worst neighborhood but it was not as great as the neighborhoods of the kids that she went to school with. I found …show more content…
Discovering my own self-identity is one of the biggest similarities that I share with Najla. My father came to the United States in the 1980s from Accra, Ghana to go to college. During his time in college he met my mother and they got married and had my brother and I. Generally, most people will have the assumption that I am African simply because I am dark skinned but they would never know that my mother was born in Laurinburg, North
Carolina. I feel like I share the same pain with Najla based on the feeling that as I grew up I had to choose a nationality and sick to one choice. I had to constantly think about traditions my family had and the foods that we eat and try and figure out if I am African or American. With age I have definitely grown a lot more in understanding myself by fusing the two cultures together instead of viewing them separately. Looking for Palestine also helped me to look at my perception of self-identity on a deeper level.
I feel like the title of the booking was slightly confusing at first glance but, stayed true to the theme of the book. The title let me know the Najla was looking for Palestine within herself.