LIpstick Jihad

The more we read this semester the more I feel like there is a trend in identity and displacement. Lipstick Jihad, the Bastard of Istanbul, Persepolis, and the Image, the Icon and the Covenant all address the need to identify oneself as a part of a particular people. Azadeh struggles between thinking of herself as Iranian or American. This is further complicated by the fact that Americans and Iranians add their own projection to Azadeh's identity and she is consequently not fully considered one or the other. I fee like what we are seeing are generations of people who feel they have multiple identities and this multiplicity is in itself a new identity. One is neither exclusively Iranian or American but somehow genuinely both. This hybrid feeling seems to somehow deconstruct that one can only belong to one place and have only one nationality. A multiplicity of nationalities seems to suggest a healthier more encompassing personality. There seems to remain a pressure however to remain one thing, one nationality. Where does a person who feels both American and Iranian or Palestinian and Jordanian belong geographically and culturally speaking? It would seem as though a person's understanding of themselves is still distinctly linked to geographic location and acceptance. This struggle with identity found in the literature we have read this semester seems to point to the desire to still categorize and identify people as one or the other. When a person can be both/and their those attempting to identify them lose their ability to create a definition. Thus we find the person experiencing hybridity and those projecting grappling with ambiguity fluidity. The result is a struggle for acceptance and understanding.