45 pages • 1 hour read
Malaka GharibI Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir
Nonfiction | Graphic Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural Context: First-Generation Americans
Gharib’s memoir identifies her as a “first-generation American:” This means she is the first generation in her family to be an American citizen. This is different than a “first-generation immigrant,” who is someone born outside of the United States who then immigrated there. Gharib is a first-generation American and a second-generation immigrant—someone born in the United States whose parents emigrated from abroad.
The book shows how the first-generation American experience is individual and varies in nuanced ways depending on the people and cultures involved. For instance, Gharib’s parents are Egyptian and Filipino. While her social cues and expectations are influenced by both cultures, she is more influenced by Filipino culture due to the amount of time she spends around her Filipino family. How one is affected by their racial and ethnic identities is extremely individualized and is further affected by other intersections of identity such as gender, class, and sexuality.
Gharib’s memoir delves into topics related to the first-generation American experience, such as feelings of isolation, stress related to acculturation, and an increased pressure to achieve. First-generation Americans can feel as if they are not fully part of American culture or their parents’ cultures. Sometimes, they experience “cultural detachment” while attempting to assimilate, which can estrange them from cultural customs or languages (Ram, Smrithi. “Between Two Cultures.” TEDx Talks. YouTube. 11 Aug. 2017). Because of prevalent systemic racism and the history of white supremacy in the origins of the United States, they might feel marked by being different from white society, which is sometimes conflated with American society by people who see Whiteness as a Cultural Norm. Some first-generation Americans feel like they have “no other choice” but to get certain degrees and jobs to emulate their parents’ idea of the “American Dream,” which their parents often relocated thousands of miles to pursue (Bezikyan, Helen. “Pressures of Being a First-Generation American-Born Citizen.” The Sundial, California State University, 28 Oct. 2017).
Many first-generation Americans report feeling an unspoken kinship with other first-generation Americans over their shared experiences, like how Gharib gravitates toward other people of color in her entry-level job after college. Forgoing the pressure to “choose” between identities can lead first-generation Americans to “proudly displa[y] who [they] are and where [they] come from,” foregrounding cultural fluency rather than cultural assimilation (Ram).
Genre Context: Graphic Memoirs
Graphic memoirs are a subgenre of graphic novels and memoirs. They depict stories about an author’s personal experiences, organized into graphic novel form with accompanying illustrations and comic panels. Their visual form allows them to depict appearances, actions, and asides in relatively small spaces without derailing the main narrative.
Many graphic memoirs deal with serious themes of life and identity. For instance, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home explores the death of Bechdel’s father and her adolescent discovery of both her sexuality and her father’s closeted sexuality. Gharib’s graphic memoir deals with topics of cultural and racial identity, assimilation, and estrangement.
Graphic memoirs often take serious themes, which can be difficult to convey and discuss, and depict them via both textual and illustrative modes. This multi-modal storytelling allows authors to convey dense or complicated issues in accessible ways. For instance, as a teenager and young adult, Gharib finds herself altering her personality and aesthetic in drastic ways depending on the surrounding people and environment. To show this, she has made a “paper doll of Malaka” (96): a paper doll of herself with a variety of accessories and outfits that can be stuck to the doll depending on context. She encourages the reader to cut the doll out of the book and dress it up “to dramatically transform and alter her personality” (96). The multi-modal genre of graphic memoir allows Gharib to create an interactive depiction of the lengths she went to as a first-generation American to assimilate to her idea of American culture.
The genre of graphic memoir allows readers to peer into another person’s life. Unlike graphic novels, which are fictional but can contain larger thematic truths, graphic memoirs convey real things that happened to real people. Unlike written memoirs, visual qualities of graphic memoir allow authors to express emotions that are difficult to express textually. One goal of forgoing the textual medium is to create a closer and more empathetic relationship between author and reader.
