As We Exist - A Postcolonial Autobiography

Informationen zum Autor Kaoutar Harchi Klappentext "In this thoughtful coming-of-age memoir, a young sociologist reflects on her Moroccan immigrant parents, their journey to France, and how growing up an outsider shaped her identity. Imbued with tenderness for her family and a critical view of the challenges facing French North African immigrants, Kaoutar Harchi's probing account illustrates the deeply personal effects of political issues. Mixed with happy memories of her childhood home in eastern France are ever-present reminders of the dangers from which her parents sought to shield her. When they transfer her to a private, Catholic middle school-out of fear of Arab boys from their working-class neighborhood-Kaoutar grows increasingly conscious of her differences, and her conflicted sense of self. Notable events in her teens-the passing of a law in 2004 banning religious symbols from public schools; the 2005 deaths of Bouna Traorâe and Zyed Benna, which sparked riots against police brutality-underscore the injustice of a society that sees Muslims not as equals but as a problem to solve. With elegant, affecting prose, As We Exist charts Kaoutar's political and intellectual awakening, which would become the heart and soul of her work as a sociologist and writer"-- Leseprobe An Arrow   And that day, I’m not sure which, but that day that once was.   I was six, maybe seven years old.   I remember the black canvas pencil case, the notebooks, the textbooks scattered on the kitchen table where I usually did my homework after school, at night. Through the crack in the door, I could see the living room and, inside the living room, the pale wooden chest of drawers with the television set and the VCR on top.   My parents, Hania and Mohamed, were in that room. Sitting side by side on the checkered sofa, they were watching their wedding video. They laughed seeing themselves with those hairstyles, those outfits. They enjoyed seeing their friends’ faces, Mohamed’s father’s house, the bustling street, and the two white horses hitched to the carriage a little ways away in which the young newlyweds, for an entire afternoon, had taken a ride along the corniche overlooking the ocean.   And that day, even though the recording was low quality, staticky, the sound of their voices, their young voices, reached me. A love arrow struck my heart, pierced right through its center. A lightning bolt. I was moved to recognize them. It was their voices—it was them.   That lightness, that beauty, seemed from a bygone era. It all belonged to another age, another place, another life. This was before me, I said to myself, it preceded me. My parents had once been young, carefree, and I was unaware. Hania and Mohamed had felt elation, I thought, and I hadn’t been there.   That’s what I understood that night.   And after hearing their voices, I looked at the television screen, at their faces. To find myself. A part of me sought to find myself in that image of them from the past. That’s what I wanted, hoped: to lose myself in my parents’ joy, to be joyous along with them, for joy, just this once, to bind us together. In their hearts, my mother’s heart, my father’s heart, at that time, in that country, without a doubt: joy accumulated. Then later, joy dispersed, departed. Wherever the joy disappeared to, they disappeared with it.   I sat in that kitchen for a long time. Hania and Mohamed thought I was studying, obedient, focused, what they expected me to be. In truth, I was watching their wedding video, full of wonder.   How straight they stood—she especially—surrounded by their brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts. The beloved tribe. Those families, on the verge of becoming one big family, were soon to be disseminated by the diaspora—the need for money, the need for work— across various European countries: France, Belgium, Spain, ...

Product details

• Authors: Kaoutar Harchi, Emma Ramadan
• Publisher: Other press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 07.03.2023
• EAN: 9781635422849
• ISBN: 978-1-63542-284-9
• No. of pages: 176
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 203 mm x 13 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries