on "feminism" (or one book at least)

... in "quotes" because the word is so loaded and means so many different things to so many different people.
anyway. my last batch of books from the library include these:
- operating instructions: a journal of my son's first year by anne lamott
- etruscans by morgan llywelyn and micheal scott
- white as snow by tanith lee
- on beauty by zadie smith
- war talk by arundhati roy
- who cooked the last supper? the women's history of the world by rosalind miles

it's this last book i want to blog about. briefly, though: "etruscans" was sort of disappointing, compared with the other ML books i have read so far; "white as snow" was lyrical and disturbing, a great read; "operating instructions" was certainly relevant, although AL was a single mother/freelancer at the time so her situation was rather different; i had already read some of the essays in "war talk" before but was struck anew by roy's passion for what she writes about - want to post in here a passage from one essay i particularly liked; and honestly i have to look at "on beauty" again - maybe i was just sleepy at the end and read it in too many sittings, but i got to the end and was totally surprised it was the end, it just didn't seem to resolve much or give much meaning to what was a mostly engaging (dare i say occasionally boring?) read... i got more out of "white teeth" which is why i say i should look at "on beauty" again coz i don't trust my reaction quite yet.

ANYWAY. so, the women's history of the world. my first thought when i picked it up to read was to wonder if it was really the women's history of the world or the women's history of the western world, since that's what "history" tends to be. but miles did a good job of being inclusive, even if she wasn't quite objective. still, it's a short book, not heavy on primary sources, definitely heavy on the author's perspective.

here's the gist: in the beginning, there was the goddess, and people worshipped her because women possessed the miracle of life and the mystery of menstruation, and nobody knew that men had anything to do with it. then, humans started figuring out cause and effect, and men figured out they had something to do with life too, so everything swung in the opposite direction and woman was just the vessel, not the originator. then monotheism came along and with its power structure (one God, one truth) and God-the-father being at the head of it, women, being not male like God (astaghfirullah, etc) were even further subdued. now, in order to truly free themselves, women must free their bodies - "if she could rescue herself from the endless cycle of sexual activity, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, pregnancy, then personal growth and social identity were possible."

so this book was not hugely informative or radical reading or anything like that, but it helped to sort of gauge my own position with regard to one kind of feminism at least. though i don't claim that miles defines feminism for anyone else. i find her argument as i understood it sort of inherently problematic - that early female-centered societies were based on ignorance of science, that the advent of greater human understanding fueled the repression of women, and that in order to break that repression women have to free themselves from the way their bodies naturally work (i.e., you have sex, you get pregnant). it's kind of like she's saying that science and truth and nature indicate or lead to the dominance of men, and we (women) have to shake off that science and truth and nature to be truly free. i might be wrong, but that's what i'm getting out of the book. i admit, i'm biased toward motherhood right now... not saying it's the epitome of womanhood necessarily (for if so, what is the epitome of manhood?) but i do believe it allows a completely new level of self to develop, if you can do it without erasing yourself, which is not always easy... funny, one of my pregnancy books described pregnant women as "the ultimate expression of female sexuality... the goddess incarnate"... which takes us right back to the matriarchal beginning, according to miles. so does sticking with the natural cycle hobble you from becoming all you can be, or make you into all you can be, or at least open a new path for you, if it closes other ones?

(hehe... i have musa cooped up in the playpen behind me so i can get at least part of this typed up without having to get up and pry his hands off of something every two seconds, and he is fussing, but just now he got quiet, so i turned around, and he was standing waving his hand over the edge, watching his shadow wave its hand on the ground... so cute!)

anyway, on the issue of freeing women from that cycle (which means unlimited contraception and abortion, practically) - i don't think complete sexual freedom for women leads to the best society we can hope for - i understand the impulse behind the idea, that men have always had such freedom because they have no consequences for their actions (in this world, lads, in this world!). let me amend - i don't think complete sexual freedom for everyone leads to the best society we can hope for. why not finally hold men accountable for their actions, rather than simply try to be as stringless as men?
but i realize her argument is a little more complex than that - it has to do with ownership of one's body, which she describes by the ability to CHOOSE whom one has sex with and CHOOSE to have a baby or not, but also includes defying the idea that a woman is the property of her family and is then transferred to the property of her husband, never really being her OWN person in anyone's eyes, which was something i railed much against in my youth...

so i get the fact that women have been treated as inferior to men for centuries in just about every culture, in varying degrees. no doubt, and no doubt we have suffered tremendously for it. i'm not going to delve here into solutions or my thoughts on why, etc... have neither the guts for the questions or the knowledge for the answers, right now ... but i do think this book is a good read, if for nothing else simply because i like reading about women's issues, and that it does a decent job of describing women's situations in historical contexts that otherwise don't consider them (how working women suffered during the western world's industrialization period, for example). plus, more importantly perhaps, miles names or gives a face to a number of women from "the beginning" who succeeded (in fulfilling their own potential) despite the odds against them, which is always refreshing to learn. but, it doesn't exactly do for women what howard zinn did for "the people" in the people's history of the united states, which is one of the best books i have ever read...

i was interested to see what miles made of the advent of islam. basically, she noted that all three monotheistic religions made women inferior beings, subject to fathers' and husbands' rules, though she also noted that the founders of those religions made efforts to alleviate the position of women (just adding that it didn't work because of the hierarchical power structure inherent in the faith systems). the problem is, she quotes and references the Qur'an by taking quotes from other scholarly works, not directly from the Qur'an. like in one place, she claims that the Prophet Muhammad was barricaded in his house surrounded by pagan goddess-worshipers, when he "conveniently" received a revelation that the trifold goddesses (al-lat, al-uzza, al-manat) were actually still around, a revelation that he canceled later... like where the heck is that from?
another example: on p. 95, she says, "The Koran makes it clear that the only virtuous woman was a mother: 'When a woman conceives by her husband, she is called in PAradise a martyr, and her labor in child-bed and her care of her children protect her from hellfire.'" (tried to find an ayah like this, not able to yet, but if you know which one she is trying to refer to please let me know!). i recognize the idea behind this "verse" though i always thought it was that a woman who died in childbirth was considered a martyr... but anyway. her reference for this quotation is a 1965 book, "The Jewel in the Lotus: a historical survey of the sexual culture of the East," by one Allen Edwardes. apart from my distaste at such a title, how does a verse rewarding what almost every woman has to go through get twisted around to be saying that they are the ONLY women who will be rewarded and therefore this is a sexist reductionist idea?

and she talks about the creation story as though it is the same for all three religions, never indicating that in the qur'anic story, it was not Eve who took the first bite and then seduced Adam - the source of centuries of female repression under the christian church - but both who disobeyed God together. aaand.. what else... oh, apparently islam "hijacked" the crescent moon symbol from the goddess religions and the Black Stone supposedly has a mark of aphrodite somewhere on it indicating it originally belonged to the goddess, etc etc. this is according to "one eyewitness," she says.

so these issues sort of invalidate some of the book for me, though i should say 1) she DOES use some primary sources, e.g. she does quote the qur'an directly a couple of times, and 2) she chronicles very well the cultural changes throughout history that affected women one way or another. though she never does tackle the question, "who cooked the last supper?"...

so i don't know what i'm getting from the library next, except i definitely want to find a biography of sojourner truth. aside from the fact that she had such a cool name, i read her famous quote again in miles' book and just would be very interested in learning more. she had thirteen children and saw most of them sold off into slavery... imagine the strength of spirit that took to survive emotionally and psychologically. for her and every other woman who has suffered like that...

random thoughts

i went to the mall today and noticed some things.
first of all, is it just me or are leggings back in? saw them in ads, saw them on women in the mall. i mean, leggings as in 80s. with long tops and wide belts. leggings.

second of all... it is so (i can't think of a word) to see the contrast between the advertisements plastered larger-than-life across the mall and the oh-so-ordinary people walking by them, trying to look like them. like the leggy cindy crawford in a dress for new york and company, or a smoky-smiling clive owen over a bottle of cologne, or ines sastre looking sultry and slender in a lancome ad, and facing these pictures is a short, bony, hunched-over asian woman with pockmarked skin and glasses, or a

haha i never finished this post but it got published anyway. probably my sneaky husband using my computer!!!

anyway. so i was saying, it just bothers me how far from reality advertising is. people are not like that, and why should we all feel awful and ugly and keep trying to make ourselves look like an airbrushed picture of an abnormal person (okay so maybe clive owen's not abnormal, just a particularly good specimen of normal)... except to spend money? why do we all fall for it? i wish i could raise musa away from advertising entirely... have you ever watched kids' commercials, for toys and such? especially boys' toys? sometimes they actually look angry as they fire their robots at each other... what's that supposed to do, encourage boys to "act like boys" and is that what boys "act like?"

God, i just want to go buy a splotch of land somewhere far away and grow my own sheep and chickens and crops and herbs and stay away from everything. i really wish it were possible... i mean, i wish i were capable of doing it, i know it's a lot more work than i'm used to and i'd probably give up and pine for my comforts. but anyway, i guess it wouldn't constitute being a good Muslim... you know, leaving the world behind and not doing any good for anyone...

anyway, my third thought was that Godiva chocolates are THE BEST boxed chocolates out there, at least in america. try their new roasted almond butter truffle. i mean, at $1.67 for one little ball of chocolate, it's extravagant, but it TASTES extravagant. WOW. oh my. indulge, indulge.

and another thing i wanted to share. went to a restaurant recently for an article. wonderful food, actually, and friendly staff, great place, but they SO need an editor for their menu!!
okay, so i'm being a nerd snob. but i can't help it, it's what my mommy made me :) here are some of the choice errors i found, typed exactly as they were in the menu (some more than once):

Gram cracker crust
Broccoli A gratin
Beur Blanc Sauce
Fillet Mignon
whole main lobster
Red skin potatoes
corn on the cobb
Andouli sausage
Caribbean style Jerked Chicken

okay, on to next post...

at the park with nani and nana

here is a picture of musa (being held in place on the side by my dad) at pullen park in raleigh - he had so much fun mashallah! (we all did)

"The "Good" Muslims: U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Pakistan"

just publicizing this study - haven't read through it yet, only this one summarizing page, but the summary at least makes some familiar points (you know, the kind where you're like DUH I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU THAT FOR YEARS!!) about u.s. media coverage of islam/the muslim world, in this case specifically pakistan, and even more specifically things like correlating the "freedom" of muslim women with how uncovered they are, conflating all "terrorists" with each other and with militants and extremists and all those dirty violent bearded brown heathen men till they're all the same and political, social, ideological and cultural contexts play no role, etc etc. so this is a study that actually examines the coverage of these issues itself and concludes that it "may still be contributing to public confusion over the need for a global “War on Terror” and the public’s perception of the global terrorist risk." go figure...

virginia tech

yes, it took me this long to find out what happened. may their families, classmates, teachers and community keep strong. one shooting is always bad enough, but this magnitude leaves me choking and wordless...
in case you didn't hear, here is the temporary web site of the collegiate times, their student newspaper, and if you scroll down to the bottom and read up you get a sense of how the students got their information, and reacted. i worked for maryland's student paper but i can only imagine what the Va tech student newsroom (banished off campus) might have been like today...

in between

i was so close to my friends in college, that when we began graduating and not being able to meet with each other for months at a time, i began to feel like life was just something that happened in between the time we spent together, which was REAL life.
o how life changes!
this is just an in-between blog, nothing really happening, nothing to really blog about. i'm going to visit my parents for a week inshallah this coming weekend. since i'll be gone next week i have to do my dining review a week early. musa's one year checkup is tomorrow; i have an appointment with the ophthalmologist on friday.
i finished finn mac cool, and since it was the last book in my batch and i haven't had the chance to go to the library again yet, i've been re-reading parts of it here and there... it wasn't profound in any way, no deeper meanings the way white teeth probably had, but it was so deeply evocative of ancient ireland that the images still linger in my mind - the hill and bog of almhain where finn built his home, but in the winter (and who ever thinks of ireland in winter?) with bare branches and tangled berryless vines, the golds and browns of the sleeping land under winter sunlight - i admire how she paints a picture of an entire culture by telling the story of one man who was unlike any other in that culture.

anyway, so i have to go to the library, maybe today? and run a few other errands. musa has taken up to four steps at a time now, but still prefers crawling - much faster, more efficient, i suppose! he's putting my hairbrush or his comb to his head and trying to brush his hair now (this is what the AAP calls a cognitive milestone, using objects as they are meant to be used instead of eating them) although he still eats them too. and occasionally with toys that are beyond his physical skill to use, after i show him how to use them, he will handle them for a minute then hand them back to me, clearly wanting me to do it again (like this little whirlygig launcher he got in a favor bag from a b-day party). still waiting for some more words, though!

alright off we go...

books!

my article was due half an hour ago and i am still struggling over the lede, and here i am blogging instead!
but i wanted to thank y'all for the book suggestions - last week i checked out two morgan llywelyn books - grania and finn maccool, white teeth by zadie smith and the forest by edward rutherfurd. i started with grania and then the forest, both of which i enjoyed immensely. both historical fiction dealing with the british isles in some way, and both included the defeat of the spanish armada from different perspectives, neither of them really spanish or english. grania tells the story of grace o'malley, a fifteenth-century irishwoman who grew up with her father's love of the sea and became a sea trader and pirate in her own right and once even went to england to face elizabeth herself. and the forest like any good rutherfurd book is a tale of a thousand years, of the new forest in southern england from 1000-something until 2000, tracing the lines and stories of some fictional and some partly fictionalized families as they weave in and out of british history. it's funny, taking such a wide perspective on these individual stories seems to give each of them less weight... the story of one woman's life and trial is captivating on its own but leaves only a family memory of blood feud. and little physical things last - the ancient wooden cross that was brought from the holy land at the start of the last millennium, puckle's old, fantastically carved bed, the seagull family's chinless profile. and people forget things that seem important to their ancestors. ...it's not riveting reading, but it's very good and satisfying on a storytelling level and all.
just finished white teeth today (which, btw, baraka, i picked up instead of on beauty just because it was paperback which is easier to read lying in bed with a sleeping baby and sleeping husband)... honestly it took me the first third or so of the book to get into it, and then it began striking me as brilliant - she was so young, younger than i am now, when she wrote it, and yet she had such vision, to see between classes, between generations, between boys and girls. okay, so it's just one view, and it's what blurbs like to call "irreverent" - she mocks gently, sometimes fiercely, all of her characters and their respective religious or otherwise ideologies (like a whole section where she quotes from islamic leaflets on the nine acts that invalidate fasting, for example, which is the sort of thing i've taken very seriously in my time, i mean, one does like to know what the scholars say could break their fast, haina?), their cultures, their personal yearnings, and yet somehow makes their humanity (well, for some of them) beautiful, maybe even respectable. a very postmodern sort of novel. it struck me, reading, that it wouldn't be possible to write such an interesting story about the muslim community in america, or at least the one that i know. it's such a different ballgame, different stadium altogether, in britain. i have had a story i've tried to write about, well, being a young practicing muslim woman in america between two cultures, and reading white teeth just made the whole story sort of slither away in shame... smith writes between like twenty cultures, and touches on things i would never touch on, adeptly, with humor. humoUr, sorry. again i wonder if it's even possible for me to write from my own experience in any way and produce something the masses might find enjoyable reading. i'm afraid it's all rather boring... but i have to try, because if i can't write, i can't do anything, i'm nobody, just hubby's wife, musa's mother, ammi and abbu's daughter, and it's not nothing to be something to somebody else but isn't it what all us womenfolk of a particular ilk are fighting for, the ability to be somebody in and of ourselves...

wow, random. so, next and last of this batch is finn maccool which i am sure i'll enjoy greatly. want to read more of the irish historical fiction. but i will also pick up on beauty and maybe some other more "literary" or "contemporary" shtuff. a suitable boy, that's one i've wanted to read for a while. i still welcome any more suggestions any of y'all might have...

now i have to get upstairs, because i have some roasting vegetables (taters, onions and carrots in garlic and butter and rosemary oil) in the oven, and hubby is making some sort of jerk chicken, and i am hungry! oh, and i finished my article somewhere in the paragraph where i was writing about the forest. yay. mo money mo money.

one year ago today...

...at this exact time, i was... probably sleeping? i dunno. probably still reeling from the relief of not experiencing contractions anymore. musa was born at 5:25 a.m., thoughtful young man that he is, having been beaten to the world by cousin raihana only five hours or so before (it looks like six hours but the time changed that morning so it's only fivish).
we went to our favorite thai restaurant amina thai with the inlaws last night and i took this funny picture of him:



WOW! close call. subhanallah. i just literally caught musa in the middle of a headfirst tumble from the seventh or eighth step up the stairs. that kid is fast!! no there's no gate at the bottom of the stairs here in our basement, there's only a wall on one side at the bottom so it wouldn't work. sheesh, my heart is pounding!

he has had a good morning otherwise alhamdulillah! i haven't blogged in a while so let me catch you up (in the few seconds i get in between pulling musa out from under the computer desk): my parents came up on march 21 and it was wonderful to see them, mashallah, and to see them with musa especially, whom they had not seen since december. the aqiqa was on march 24; way more men came than women, but we were at a masjid so we were able to leave plenty of food for the community alhamdulillah. it was good to see everyone and interesting to see very different kinds of friends together.
saturday night right about midnight musa threw up his entire dinner plus milk while in his sleep.... it woke him up of course but otherwise didn't seem to bother him much at all. i didn't note his fever then because i had given him tylenol for teething pain, but by morning he was quite warm. it just ended up being that stupid stomach virus - raise your hand if you got it, too! - that is going around the DC area like crazy. i got it after musa, on thursday night, and had a miserable friday trying to get us both out of the house and ready, then running errands (including renewing my driver's license) with nothing in my stomach and a fever of 101 or so. finally made it to my inlaws where my MIL most kindly made me khichdee (sp?) with chicken and my bro-in-law ran out to get me gatorade and musa and i both slept a few hours in the afternoon.

much better the next day! this past weekend was the DC MIST youth competition (i believe it's Muslim Inter-Scholastic Tournament) and i had volunteered to judge the short story category (they tried to draft me this weekend last year but i was in labor and all). so i spent from 12:30 to 9:30 p.m. there doing so (not easy while watching baby, even though i had a lot of help the second half of the day!). but subhanallah, i had so much fun! doing something i enjoy and know i can be useful at - reading and critiquing stories - while hanging out with friends, meeting new sisters, and recalling high school days (i went to the bathroom to throw away a diaper and wash my hands, and these two girls were talking: "So, M.K. said... and she said to A.G., go back to your G.F.! Oh my God, I said ..."). i only really got glimpses of the kids, didn't really get to interact with them, but from what i did catch and from what i heard from the other volunteers, there were two things that struck me: one, how much incredible potential that generation might have, with all their talent and their desire to do something within their muslim community, and two, how much of a sense of self-entitlement there is among this crowd. i'm making a generalization - i know there are plenty of great kids out there mashallah - but i know the volunteers experienced a lot of rudeness from the kids, some of it very in-your-face, because the kids wanted this or that or didn't feel like things were going right or whatever... i tried to remember back to my MYNA days and whether or not we acted like that. probably...

anyway, i think i would do it again!
so i've been worried about musa this past week because he barely eats right anyway, but after being sick he has hardly eaten anything all week - like maybe a yobaby one day, half a slice of toast the next, aside from nursing. but this morning he had toast, swiss cheese, scrambled eggs AND cereal WITH cow's milk. ALHAMDULILLAH! not like full servings of each but plenty of food mashallah. i feel like anything can happen, i feel like it's a new day altogether, when he eats right. subhanallah.

anyway. i should be nice and post a not-embarrassing-in-the-future picture of him too, so here is musa being smiley-shy with a friendly woman at the restaurant last night:



and here is musa one year ago today, for memories' sake!



alright, well, my one-year-old is very stinky so i have to go clean him up...
happiest of birthdays to cousin raihana!! we hate having missed so much of your development - in some of cousin koonj's pictures i can see the little girl you are becoming. we miss you so very much and pray that it is not too long before we can see you again...

oh! and thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday!