When I read Habibi I had actually felt that it was a good book and I could not understand why it was so controversial outside of the relationship between Liyana and Omer. I had really thought that it had portrayed a good message, one of peace and acceptance. I even wrote about that in my questioning the text paper.
After being in class I feel very different and realized some of the negative aspects of the book. When I read it by myself I had noticed the violence, but I had not really thought about it critically. I had been focusing on other aspects. When it was brought to my attention in class I felt very naive and I realized that being in a class like TE 448 is a very valuable thing. Without this class I may have provided the book Habibi to someone else to read. Now that I know the background of the book, and realize how negatively the Jewish are portrayed in this book I will not recommend it and my view on it changed completely.
About Me
- Courtney
- My name is Courtney Kowalczyk and I am currently interning at Hope Middle School in a fifth grade classroom. I also graduated and am currently taking graduate courses at Michigan State University.
3 comments:
One thing I liked about Dr. Waltzer's read of the book is that, although he was critical of the lack of context/portrayal of the Israeli characters, he still saw merits in the book. Did you as well? Or does the portrayal of the Jewish characters overwhelm the other aspects of the text?
I liked Dr. Waltzer's read of the book for that reason as well. I see the merits of the book that he talks about, but I feel that the portrayal of the Jewish characters highly outweighs those merits for me.
I actually had seen the negative portrayal of both Jews and Christians in my first read, but I also really enjoyed the description of Arab culture. I feel that TE 448 is valuable for that too, though, because it helps me think about how to balance these issues and who I would share this book with (my conclusion is that I would give it only to high schoolers or adults).
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