The Arab of the Future: on memoir & ethical storytelling

books mentioned:

//me//

[JoseOrihuela]

I just finished the third book and waiting for the 4th arriving late 2019, very interesting memories and a great way to know about a bit from a different culture. I think it's hard for people from Europe or USA to understand some customs from a very different culture and to read some very violent passages which are actually completely real, they are more use to consume "beautiful" things, traditional narratives, confortable and not disturbing, we, who live in countries like know that our societies are much more than that and we do not need condescendence when somebody make an attempt to portrait our cultures, thank you Riad!

[georgeleorgebeorge]

Loving the first volume. His father is one of the most facepuncheable characters I have come across in years. Why a Sorbonne-educated French girl would fall for someone like that and take everything lying down, is not explained so far. Hope the author delves into this angle a little bit more in later volumes. Being an emigrant, I can definitely sympathise with the author’s views of his heritage. When people leave their countries of origin, it is often for a reason. It’s easy to be nostalgic about what you’ve left behind, but the truth is often far from rosy.

[thekankas]

Thanks. I read the first two books years ago. Still sticks with me. I come away feeling like these are the more negative views also… but also they’re perceived negative because of their juxtaposition to western views. This is the kind of thing that sticks out to a kid.

I personally enjoyed his no judgement perspective. He has said that he idolized his father as a kid, while a westerner might view his memories differently.

I too try to not be too nationalist, as what a nation represents can change… but I still decide where to live based on what it offers me.

I rated them 3/5 and 4/5 when I first read.

[RememberedReads]

Heh, I loved The Arab of the Future, but I think I loved it for the same reasons that you didn't enjoy it!

I think it's too easy for multi-national/ethnic authors to end up stuck in that box, at least as far as marketing is concerned (for example, I think Marjane Satrapi gets stuck in that kind of box) so I sympathize with Sattouf's desire to stay out of that while still telling his own story. I also think the way nationalism feels these days in both Western Europe and the Middle East makes it too easy to overtly politicize personal stories, and because of that I liked that he wrote his memoirs as stripped of that kind of thing as possible.

Although aside from that I definitely have biases that probably made me love it in addition to all of that. Stylistically, I'm more drawn towards non-narrative structures for both fiction and memoirs, so that bit is down to taste, and a lot of the memories (especially in the first one where they jump between France, Libya, and Syria) really reminded me of being a kid and moving through countries that belonged to one or the other of my parents and still not being quite a home there.

It's definitely interesting to think about either way, so thanks for creating the discussion! :)

[brandon.mcpherson]

This book looks really great! I gotta read it soon! Very interesting 🤔

[kroutkas]

Very interesting point of view. I think you're looking for a strong narrative, which is pretty much absent from Sattouf's works in general. For the "unbiased" part, I think the author meant that he wasn't deliberately implying in his books that Middle Eastern countries suck and France was great. He just wanted to put on paper his memories, arrange them in chronological order and let the readers make their own advice.

By the way, I just noticed a difference between The Arab of the Future and Persepolis: while the first just describe Riad's everyday life under Gaddafi's Libya and Assad's Syria, the second actually relates THE 1979 revolution, a strong and bloody event, which certainly helps to create an emotional connection between the reader and the main character.

[jesuismanu]

I had similar thoughts while reading the first book (and it persisted throughout the second book that I just finished) and it gave me some very uncomfortable feelings.

The book seems to show memories that portray Syria and Libya in a very similar way as a lot of people and media do in the countries I come from and live in (The Netherlands and Belgium respectively).

This made me feel uneasy because I’ve learned and am trying to unlearn to react to these opinions and factoids by agreeing and adding them on my pile of information about the Middle East without critically looking at the information.

I’ve had a discussion about it with my partner who unlike me (white and male) is originally from China but grew up in Paris and she disagreed vehemently with my assessment.

For the moment I decided to not give any rating to the first two books until I read the rest and talk about it with some more people but it was nice to find your video and also some comments on Goodreads (including the one you mentioned) that expressed a similar concern.

[georgeleorgebeorge]

Also, one other point I would like to make but keep I mean I literally read Persepolis YEARS ago so my memory is a bit rusty. AFAIR, Satrapi was born into a different social class than that of Satouff, isn’t that right? It’s one thing being born into a middle class life - even in a place like Iran - and quite another being born into the kind of world where people literally relieve themselves in the street like it’s the normal thing to do. It’s the kind of thing that does tend to colour your perspective, doesn’t it?

[MatthewSciarappa]

This is very VERY interesting. I love this discussion. Can we separate an author's work with an author's persona? I don't think so. Reading Part One of this book without knowing nearly anything about Riad Sattouf, I enjoyed it. But I'm kind of grumpy now. If he had owned up to his experience and if he had said, "No, this is how I feel about Syria and France, and I identify with would you have liked it more? If he owned up to his bias, would it have been better? I think perhaps.
I don't think there is responsibility in memoirs to portray anything in any particular way. Authors have no obligation to depict their story with any reverence to the outside world. (Whether or not that is morally okay is another story). But saying "I'm unbiased" is actually just incorrect. No person creating art can be unbiased.

Form is another interesting point. The way you talked about this book versus Brown Girl Dreaming intrigued me. It made me think of Milk & Honey, and the sensation that book of "poetry" has caused. People often defend Rupi Kaur's "poetry" by citing her real-life, vulnerable experience. It sets up the idea that because something is earnest, it can be lacking in form. I don't like this sentiment. What Rupi Kaur put out was in no way poetry, and in fact, just grammatically incorrect prose--and that's me being generous saying it's prose, and not just "thoughts." But claiming "poetry" as her form of autobiography is almost insulting to poets, saying, "Oh, it's not written well, but I really really mean it." Do authors who write with structure, verse, punctuation, and grammar NOT mean what they write? Problems.
Sorry for the long comment!!!!

[PaolaMancera]

I feel like in books whether fiction or nonfiction the author should leave who the reader likes/roots for to the reader, especially because sometimes it's like the author is telling you: here, have a character to hate, and they do so by villainizing them with no purpose. Like the character is mean for the sake of being mean as oppose to having actual motivations. Does that make sense?

[mohammadhoumad]

Arab world is so miserable that you can find a book titled with "Arab" in 22 deferent languages non of them is Arabic

[yeeyeeasshaircut]

I really liked the book but yea it can get really uncomfortable
. Sattouf (any non western author) has the right to highlight how fucked up his country and culture can be. The issue is that he seemed to do it with no regard for how the west will often use those fucked up aspects of the Middle East as an exuse to be xenophobic/ imperialist/ equally fucked up
. His dad gets a lot more nuanced by book 4, apparently even gets a big character arc in book 5
. also feel like the depiction of Syrian and Arab culture would have been a lot less negative if he lived in a relatively progressive big city like Aleppo

[splitreads]

Hmm, this is conflicting indeed. Maybe he (and the publisher) were totally fine with snippets of random childhood memories on paper for posterity, without Sattouf trying to gain any meaning from his experiences.
I agree with you that his memories cannot be unbiased and "without themes"...
Maybe this was better suited for his own memories and keepsake, things he could pass down to his family if they wanted to know about his daily life in the future. What you say he does in Arab of the Future is 1) not really a traditional graphic memoir 2) not even really a story (how can he create this book and have no real points or "lessons" or main messages?)
It's disappointing to me that you say the majority is negative - maybe this book is better suited for someone with a much more pessimistic outlook on the situations he illustrates.
One book I thought of while you were talking was Ozge Samanci's Dare to Disappoint, which is also similar to Persepolis and Arab of the Future in describing gov't repression, parents and their expectations etc. Ozge Samanci you could tell didn't always extract meaning from her experiences (like Sattouf), but she at least tried. While it didn't land towards the end in truly making me understand her main themes, I could see that she was trying to do it. Others are a lot more successful, like Satrapi is.
This book sounded interesting when you first mentioned it a while back, but now I'm just like meh.