An abridged version of Rawi Hage’s recent review of Eid’s Being Arab from the Literary Review of Canada --
"I was at first reluctant to review Paul Eid’s Book Being Arab: Ethnic and Religious Identity Building among Second Generation Youth in Montreal because the book is a study of second-generation Arab Canadians (or more precisely, Arab Québécois) and of this group’s ethnic and religious identity. I am a first-generation Arab Canadian or Québécois, among other things, and one of the few secular, heretic non-believers among this group. In short, I am an anomaly in a community where even members of the second generation consider religion to be an important factor in their lives. (According to the statistics in the book, 52 percent say that religion is "very important" and 30.5 percent that it is "important"). I am always slipping and twisting not to be confined within a single identity box with the label "A." But then, somehow, reading through the book, and perhaps because I have been living in the West for a long time, I found myself feeling a certain communality with the second generation’s mode of an ever-shifting existence, and I was reminded of my own profound rebellion and self-imposed exile from first-generation ways of living and values.
Being Arab is a social and psychological mapping of a very misunderstood and neglected group, the second generation of Arab immigrants living in Montreal. Chapters and questions cover a wide range of topics, including language proficiency, the consumption of cultural goods, in-group friendship and parental commitment to ethnic identity transmission, and the place of religion in second-generations Arab lives. Eid charts the ever-volatile negotiation of identity and endless maneuvering that is performed and adapted in the presence of the ethnic majority. It is a complex sociological analysis, backed by scientific data, which presents a portrait of the community I had rebelled against in many ways, covering attitudes toward gender, the predominance of organized religion and the confessional divides.
A multifaceted, multilayered and constantly changing identity is certainly not exclusive to Arab second-generation youth. It is virtually a universal second-generation immigrant experience, a fact that Eid is well aware of. As he states in the introduction: "It must be acknowledged that children of immigrants never mechanically replicate the cultural models and patterns to which they have been exposed. Rather, they draw on them to make contextual and multifaceted identity choices."
What I believe justifies the book’s insular and geographically confined study is Eid’s insight into and awareness of the particularities of this community’s history and values, and the role of gender and religion therein. Such insight makes the community a unique case study. But, in the end, one must also stress that the book is not just an analysis of the Arab community of Montreal but also a reflection on the wider experience of Canadian multiculturism, particularly in Quebec.
One of the strongest and most insightful aspects of Eid’s book is precisely [the] elaboration—premised on a deep understanding of the intricacy of the dialectic—of the divide and, more importantly, the communality on cultural and social issues between Christian and Muslim Arabs, particularly on issues of gender, religion and patriarchy. Another strength is how well the book succeeds in situating this internal social fabric against the backdrop of a multicultural metropolis like Montreal.
Eid’s studies on gender and the female role in the Arab immigrant family could only come from an insider who has lived, experienced and reflected on these issues. He describes how female virginity, chastity and the relation between tradition and family honour are important components in the tension that exists within the community—between first and second-generation Arabs, and between young men and women (who have different perspectives on this subject). He shows how this tension helps build an invisible fence between the Arab community and the French Québécois. Luckily the book does not present this issue simplistically. For instance, according to Eid’s interview, within the community the attitudes of young women toward virginity are nuanced. His study also indicates that attitudes on female chastity, honour and "protection" differ little between Arab Christians and Arab Muslims. And throughout the book, Eid does an impressive job of laying the data for potential cultural generalizations—the kinds of simplistic notions that some of the western media would love to exoticize and sensationalize to assert the superiority of one culture over the other—but then swiftly and thoughtfully reassesses these generalizations with nuanced analysis, data and interviews.
In the final chapters, Eid proceeds to compare the diasporic Arab communities in France and in Canada. According to Eid, both communities are subjected to discrimination. But the two contries’ policies—and the reactions to the ethnic communities to these policies—are very different. France’s assimilationist approach aims for a forced integration, whereas Canada’s multicultural ideal permits—if it does not exactly encourage—minority groups to maintain their ethno-cultural differences. In France, the confrontational relationship between the Arab second generation … and the majority is part of a wider dynamic, namely the struggle of the neo-colonized in French society. In contrast, the Arab Canadian relationship to the majority is not framed by historical injustices. Eid argues that discriminatory practices in Canada are far subtler. He cites Raymond Breton’s 1983 study, which shows "very low levels of racial discrimation awareness among visible minorities in Canada; rates of self-reported discrimination among Canada’s racialized minorities are abnormally low," according to Breton, "when measured against the actual magnitude of the problem."
*** Read the full review in Vol. 15, No. 7 – September 2007 issue of the Literary Review of Canada.
