For my capstone project, I wanted to understand why the stereotype of Arab-Americans working simple jobs came to be. I researched the different waves of immigration from the middle east, but the part that I most wanted to show was the stories behind the stereotype.

Introduction: This essay investigates the question are immigrants really that different? I use two of the book which I have read to answer this question. I also mention the medias role in influencing this question. I conclude that if we get rid of the labels, there are little to no differences.

Whenever most people hear the word immigrant their mind automatically thinks of people very different from them. The media can often create labels of immigrants as being dangerous, thief-like, label them as illegals. Americans don’t like to be called dangerous or thief-like and Americans often view them as the “other” people that are so different than us that they can’t even fit in the American-culture. As I have read the stories of immigrants throughout the last couple months is that there are a lot less differences than we might think. Not only are morals the same but also the everyday quirks are the same.

The book Behold the Dreamers 1 follows the story of Jende, a Cameroonian immigrant who becomes a driver for Clark, a partner at Lehman and brothers. From the beginning of the book, it seems like there are a lot of differences between them. Jende is of the lower class making only $35,000 from Clark a year. It never says Clark’s salary but he has both a house in the Hamptons as well as a huge apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Jende has an apartment which houses four people, but has only one bedroom. Clark has an apartment so big that he needs multiple cooks, housekeepers, and maids to keep it together. As the book goes on, Jende and Clark become quite friendly with one another. They often have conversations while traveling from one location to another. One conversation they had was about Clark’s son Vince. Vince is a twenty-two year old who recently graduated from Columbia. After graduating, Clark made Vince go to NYU law school. But this isn’t what Vince wants, and he decided to drop out of law school. Jende hears about this and become very interested in this decision. He decides to talk to Clark about it. Jende asks Clark about what he thinks about this decision, and Clark is extremely disappointed he says that going to Law School will make you successful. This is the exact same way Jende reacted when he heard that Vince wanted to drop out. Jane’s cousin is a lawyer on wall street and is very successful, his dream for his child Liomi is for him to become a successful lawyer.

Even though Clark and Jende come from two very different worlds they can agree on two things: that they both want success for their children, and that becoming a lawyer is the way to do it. In this book, you hear both Clark and Jende’s opinion on how to be successful in the United States but you never hear if this is something which their children want. They both would rather take success over the happiness of their children. You constantly see this theme recurring in the book, hard work and success. One day, Jende’s wife Neni is called into Liomi’s school due to an education problem with Liomi. The teacher says that Liomi is distracted in school and that he distracts other students in his class, and this makes Neni extremely upset. As soon as they leave, she starts scolding Liomi, asking if he wants to have money in the future, asking if he wants to be successful in the future, all she wants for Liomi is for him to have a good life and she thinks that asking these questions is the way to push him into the right path. Just over the river this is exactly what Clark wants for his kids. In the book he is constantly seen having arguments over the phone and in person with Vince, asking if he wants to be successful in the future, if he wants to make a name for himself, if he wants to have a good life. When Jende and Clark first meet you would never think that these people from two completely different parts are similar, just when they start having conversations do you see that they have very similar morals.

People always focus on the differences between people from different countries. They look at the language, the mannerisms, the religion, but if people look past those things, they will find people who are just like us. Not only do these people have the same values as us but they live a very similar day to day life like us. In the book Exit West 2 there are two main characters named Saeed and Nadia. The book follows their life falling in (and out) of love, having to flee their country together, and ultimately their lives in new countries. In the beginning of the book we are introduced to both characters, first telling the story of Nadia, a young woman who lives alone and works at a marketing company. We also learn about how she grew up. “She had gone to a school that emphasized rote memorization, for which she was by temperament particular ill-suited, and so she spent a great deal of time doodling in the margins of her textbooks and notebooks. Hunched over the hide curlicues and miniature woodland universes from the eyes of her teachers.” pg 21 This is a quote which showed how Nadia was as a student, when reading this quote I realized that I knew so many people like Nadia. That her personality was also present in people around me. This quote really shows that these “foreigners” these people which we often view as other, are just like us. Their schooling is all about memorization and taking notes. That when these “foreigners” get bored in class they also doodle.

When disregarding language, religion, and place of birth we can view many similarities. These constructed differences which are influenced by hate are to just target a group and tell no truth. Jende and Clark have the same values and want the same for their children, Nadia is just like the kid doodling in their notebooks in the back of the class. Immigrants are different simply because every person is different, but if we remove the titles of Immigrants, Undocumented, and Illegals then the differences start to fade.

1Mbue, Imbolo. Behold the Dreamers: a Novel. Random House Inc, 2017. 2Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Penguin Random House, 2017.

Introduction: This essay explores the difference between a home and a house. I told the story of my family coming to the United States to find a new home, after fleeing a war-torn country. I used both scenes of memory and artwork description. I am proud of the amount of description and I hope to carry that for my future pieces of work.

Essay:

I grew up in a home which was an escape from the bustling and rustling of Philadelphia. A home that always smelled of turmeric and cardamom. A place where we ate Manoushe for breakfast and washed it down with Hibiscus tea. A place where we would make a Lamb Ouzi for a celebration. Anytime there was the Lebanese Festival we would throw on our kaftan and play the Darbuka with Joey Tayoun. On our walls, we had art from the Hurriyah movement, and the blues of the Meditteranean were painted. One of my favorite piece of art is a photograph of a young girl kicking a soccer ball. The soccer ball is very rugged and not pumped up with air. She is wearing clothing that is too big for her, and her curly hair is wrapped up with a ribbon in a ponytail. You can’t see her face, just her tiny eight-year-old frame. The wall behind her is filled with trash and graffiti in an unknown language. She’s a Palestinian refugee playing in a refugee camp. A tent had become her new house, while her home was covered in bullet holes and crackling bricks. The home had always been very important for our family. Home didn’t just mean the place that you lived for a certain amount of time, that was a house. The home was the place where you felt yourself, a place of constant comfortability. We found the sense of feeling home always came when we were together, especially for my father and his siblings. My father and his siblings grew up in Beirut Lebanon. My father loved growing up in Lebanon. It was his paradise. It was a place where you can visit the white peaks of Mount Lebanon, learn the deep history of Byblos, and visit the beaches of Tyre. A place rich in culture and diversity, where you can see a mother covered head to toe in a niqab and her daughter right next to her in shorts and a t-shirt. He loved being with all his uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. He never thought he would leave. One problem with Lebanon was that it never had a stable democracy. In 1975 a civil war broke out. After six months of seeing parts of Beirut crumble, my family left in search of a new safe home. They eventually came to King of Prussia a suburb outside of Philadelphia. They thought that this was a temporary move and that they would be able to go back home, but the civil war didn’t end for another fifteen years and they had to adapt to having America as their home. Right after college, my dad moved straight into Philly into a house in Society Hill. The first day that he moved in, a neighbor of his introduced himself. As they began to start talking he realized that this neighbor was Egyptian who grew up in Lebanon. He found someone that went through the same things as he did. He realized that it was very similar to Beirut a loud city where people honked as much as they talked, a place where people would yell at you instead of talk, and a place which had so much city pride. With the many years that he has spent in Philly, he found a place where he belonged. A place that he didn’t feel like an outsider. This was his new home, but his true and original home was still Beirut. One day I was looking at Airbnb, my dad came up to my room and asked to look for Airbnb in Beirut. I did a quick search and hundreds of apartments and homes came up. I clicked on one that had pictures of the sea which happened to be in a neighborhood called Mar Mikhael. We looked through the pictures and then I read the description for him. “This apartment is a 1950’s inspired apartment on a small street called Armenia, located in the beautiful Mar Mikhael neighborhood. Do you know where this is?” I asked. “ Our home was a block away from that street,” he replied with a smile. A moment passed and the smile stayed on his face, he was reminiscing on the memories from his life on Mar Mikhael. Just looking through the photos he made connections with every little thing. “ Under that apartment used to be the best Manoushe place.” “And we use to race our bikes over that street.” With just a few pictures he was able to give me a tour of his childhood home. He was able to answer any questions I had about his life before the United States. But most importantly, even if it was just for those few seconds he was able to feel at home again.