I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir

In these final chapters, Gharib adjusts to married life with someone whose culture differs greatly from her own and finds more peace with her identity.

The run-up to Gharib and Darren’s wedding does not go smoothly. When her father hears that she is marrying Darren, he disapproves. He and Gharib stop speaking for a month. While Muslim men are allowed to marry other “People of the Book”—Jewish and Christian individuals—in addition to Muslim women, Muslim women “cannot marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts” (Badilini, Sara. “There Are More Muslims in Interfaith Relationships but Not Many Imams Willing to Marry Them.” The Washington Post, 14 Jan. 2022). Some organizations such as Muslims for Progressive Values advocate for interfaith marriages, arguing that the way “marriage is interpreted in Islam today is ‘cultural,’ and it’s not prescribed in the Koran” (Badilini). Just like with all cultures and religions, the beliefs of individual Muslim people vary widely and cannot be generalized to everyone who practices Islam.

Eventually, Gharib calls her father and tells him: “I don’t want what happened between you and Mom to happen to me” (135). One of the contributing factors of her parents’ divorce was their “stubborn” inability to work through their cultural differences, a pitfall Gharib will work to avoid in her own marriage to Darren. Gharib’s ideas about how to live her life differ from her father’s expectations for her: While he is a devout Muslim, Gharib grew up with a mix of Muslim, Catholic, Egyptian, Filipino, and American influences. She is open with her father about their cultural differences and tries to start a dialogue rather than let their argument hurt their relationship.

The conflict between Gharib and her father is portrayed as one of the most emotional parts in her memoir and is purposefully one of the least resolved. Her father accepts that Gharib loves Darren, but says “it’s me who will be punished by God—for not being there to help you marry a Muslim” (135). Gharib reveals the uncomfortable truth that in real life, large cultural conflicts do not get tidily fixed. Gharib’s father puts aside his disappointment to attend the wedding and walk Gharib down the aisle alongside her mother. His belief that he will be divinely punished does not disappear, but he chooses to support Gharib’s decision anyway. By including this, Gharib depicts the fraught cultural conflicts that can crop up between different generations of immigrant families.

Gharib’s marriage to Darren provides her with new opportunities to showcase her cultures. After going through periods of Cultural Isolation and Assimilation, she is newly appreciative of her background. Her “big, fat, Filipino-Egyptian-American Southern Baptist-Muslim wedding” blends aspects from her and Darren’s cultures (139). Darren’s Baptist grandfather officiates the ceremony using inspiration from both the Bible and Koran. Her half-sister sings a song in Arabic, and they perform “the Filipino coin, veil, and cord ceremony” (139). As a child, Gharib wanted to integrate her parent’s religions and cultural customs together into one practice, even though at times they seemed contradictory. As a teen, she doesn’t feel like a “true” Filipino, Egyptian, or American, and goes through periods where she feels isolated or attempts to assimilate into white culture and hide her parents’ cultures. Now, as an adult, Gharib begins to find ways to blend her cultures together—not in contradicting ways but in complementary ones.

This also presents its challenges. Like many first-generation Americans, Gharib has lost or ignored aspects of her parents’ cultures when trying to assimilate. Now that she wants to integrate them into her relationship with Darren, she wonders if she alone can “carry on the torch” (144). Some of the social mores she retains from her family clash with Darren’s. At one point, Gharib casually invites a cousin to stay at their house for three weeks, which shocks Darren. Gharib doesn’t understand why he thinks that this is a “verrrry long time” for family to stay over (146); many Filipino families live in multi-generational households that include more than the immediate family most white American families live with. Cultural differences like these are so ingrained into daily life that it doesn’t even occur to Gharib that Darren might not welcome family staying in their house for that long.

However, unlike Gharib’s parents, she and Darren adjust to each other’s cultures in a give-and-take manner. Thinking about the children she and Darren will have one day helps Gharib figure out her own sense of identity. She decides that even if she can’t teach and pass on the languages and social customs of her parents, her children can visit Egypt and the Philippines and know “that all this is a part of them” (156). This helps Gharib, who realizes that being a “true” Egyptian, Filipino, or American is about something deeper than she believed in her youth.