Category: Miscellaneous

Alright y’all, I hate the end the hiatus with a post that’s semi-negative in tone, but this is the post that was scheduled for today. Well actually, it was going to come out at midnight between Friday and Saturday EST, but I pushed it back to fit all three posts in one day. Am I crazy for attempting three posts? Am I gonna try anyway? Of course.

Some of the people who ask me these questions are genuinely curious,  but most usually have a hint of malice or insistence in their tone that implies they are correct in their thinking and that it is I who must be wrong. I don’t really mind when the people are actually curious, but I’m writing this post to avoid the judgement people. I’ve decided to answer these questions once and for all so I can just redirect curious folk here instead of spending my time repeating myself.

1. Aren’t you hot in all that?

Yes, the sun is out. I’m hot, you’re hot, everybody outside is probably hot right now. I’m likely no more or less hot than you are. Actually, my clothes provide some protection from the sun so I’m hot but I don’t feel like my skin is burning off. Besides, I’m not really wearing that much. In the summer, I usually wear a thin floor-length dress, a breathable scarf, and sport sleeves. Sometimes I’ll wear a light-weight jacket or cardigan instead of sport sleeves to cover my arms. The various areas of my body are only covered by 1-2 layers of fabric, and there’s typically wind circulation through my clothes. Trust me, I’m not going to overheat.

2. So where are you really from?

I hate this question because it implies that I am not and cannot be from the U.S. I’m an American citizen and I always have been. My entire family is American.

3. Even your grandparents and great-grandparents are American?

Yes. My family line goes all the way back to at least the beginning of slavery. There are no records of this, of course, but my point is that we’ve been in the U.S. for so long that past citizenship (even if they do exist) are no longer relevant.

   4. How can people tell what your facial expression is?

The same way people can tell what people are feeling when they are talking on the phone: you can hear my expression in my voice. Those who know me well know the faces I make to accompany the various weird phrases in my vocabulary.

5. How do your friends recognize you on the street?

I don’t know, they just do. I have my own sense of style. They know how I dress, they know how I walk, they know how I talk, they know how I use my hands while I’m talking. True story: someone once spotted me in D.C. before I even fully realized who they were.

   6. Does your dad force you to wear that?

No. I came to my own decision to wear it.

7. So he doesn’t force you to cover? What about your brother?

No. Nobody forces me to dress the way I do, but people sure do seem preoccupied with trying to get me to undress. For some reason, if women wear to much they’re prudish/extremist but if they wear too little they’re whores/asking for it. Stop policing what other people wear.

8. Why do you cover when your mother and your sisters don’t?

We are different people. We have different likes, friends, and behaviors. We’re just living our lives the best way we see fit.

   9. Can you say something in your native language?

“Hello.” Yes, English is my native tongue, and is really the only language I actually feel absolutely confident speaking. To be fair, if I’m in a country where people don’t speak English, I’m more than happy to have a short conversation because I know people just want to practice. When I get this question in the U.S./other English-speaking places, though, it implies that because I look the way I do, I cannot possible be a native English speaker. It implies that I do not belong. It’s actually rather hurtful.

  10. Any question relating to Islam:

I actually don’t mind these questions unless people are obviously pushing an anti-Islam agenda. A lot of the time people ask me things I don’t have ready answers to, or they ask me things I need to fact-check before I feel confident speaking. If you’re willing to give me time to do a bit of research and get back to you, then I’ll be happy to answer questions about Islam, especially as it pertains to the way I practice it. I’m no scholar. I’m not even literate in Arabic (I can make sounds and pick out words but I generally have no idea what I’m reading without a translation) so I can’t quite do the in-depth research I’d like to do. I’m working on it, but like anything worth attaining knowledge takes time.

I wish I could come up with some pithy conclusion, but I don’t quite know how one rounds out a Q&A post. I might revisit this post later if I notice more trends in the questions I receive.

I plan on writing reviews more so I can remember the content of the books I read and how I feel about them, but perhaps my reviews will prove useful to other people as well. In order for my review to be of any service, though, I feel it necessary to provide some standard by which I am measuring the books, even if that standard is mostly based on subjective factors.

The first area of critique is word choice. A one-star rating suggests the author exhibits extremely poor word choice while a five-star rating suggests phenomenal word choice. Authors of lower scoring books tend to make simple and/or repetitive word choices. Most books, however, tend to fall into the three-star category, meaning I didn’t take particular notice of the novel’s vocabulary. The words in a three-star book are fairly average and easy to read, but probably aren’t the most interesting.

Next comes “intrigue,” another category based entirely on personal preference. Books with intrigue are, if you’ll pardon my cliché, page-turners. I grant five-stars to the most addicting books and one-star to the books I finished merely because I decided I would. Three-star books are books that I wanted to put down but were just good enough to keep me reading. Two-star books are books I mostly detested while four-star books are books I mostly loved.

The last two categories, “plot” and “ideas”, relate to fiction and nonfiction books respectively; it doesn’t make sense to rate a book on the reproductive activity of snakes on plot, nor does it make sense to rate Harry Potter on ideas (actually, that’s debatable, because fiction tends use figurative language to convey an underlying message, but because the perceived message is not concrete, I will refrain from rating it. I may, however, comment on those ideas). In order to rate these categories, I ask myself a few questions:

Plot
Is it interesting? Is it predictable? Plots I can see through to the end obviously get low ratings while surprise endings get higher ratings.

Ideas
Is the argument clear? Does it make sense? Is it well supported? With nonfiction books I’ve found that I can like the information and hate the opinion, making this a difficult category to score. I try to rate based solely on the quality of the information. If I strongly agree/disagree with the author’s opinion, I make a note of it but keep it out of the rating.

With a rubric sketched out (I was going to say “fleshed out” but in reality this is just a rudimentary list of criterion to get me started; I might add more later), I should be able to understand ratings I give from this point forward. The next step now is to write the reviews. I’ve gotten into the habit of writing short reviews on Goodreads that capture my feelings immediately after having finished a book, but I’d like the reviews on my blog to be a bit more in-depth. I don’t want them to turn into dissertations, though. The issue with writing a review for the blog is that I have to sit down and find the time to write. Poems come easily, I usually write them in a notebook when inspiration hits and transcribe them. Writing a book reviews, by comparison, seems like a daunting task. Still, I’ll work out a system and get the reviews rolling (insha’Allah).