All American Yemeni Girls Being Muslim in a Public School by Loukia K. Sarroub (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 158 pages.)

Abstract

In her book, Loukia Sarroub offers an ethnographic account of the lives of
six Yemeni-American girls by following them through public schools from
1997-2002 to “obtain a deeper and richer understanding of their day-to-day
lives at home and at school” (p. 19). By observing them in the school,
home, malls, and mosque, as well as at their community’s social occasions,
Sarroub investigates the tensions between their lives and identities in the
American public school system and their family lives at home, both in the
United States and in Yemen, their land of origin.
In the first chapter, Sarroub details the theories behind her ethnographic
research, introduces the research background, reviews the
research methodology, and gives an overview of the participants. In chapter
2, she chooses Layla, one of the Yemeni-American girls, as a representative
of the group. As Sarroub explains, Layla struggled to find a
space for herself, because “it was not always clear to her whether she was an American or a Yemeni, and her attitude toward her home and school
lives reflected her consternation with both identities” (p. 30). Being an
Arab Muslim woman myself and living as a minority in a western society,
I can relate to the struggle between gender roles. The girls’ roles are
prescribed by culture and traditions, and their gender identity is constructed
in ways that have been influenced by American society.
Therefore, I expected the author to provide a more detailed analysis of
how adolescents construct their gender identity in both Arab Muslim
Yemeni and secular American cultures ...