All American Yemeni Girls: Being Muslim in a Public School

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments The writing of this book was not a solitary activity. Long before there was a manuscript, a group of people greatly influenced my thinking. Michael Silverstein and Karen Landahl taught me to question critically how people make sense of their lives through language and culture. Gerald Graff and Philip Jackson inspired me to make the intellectual leap from theoretical linguistics and cultural anthropology into literacy studies and education. P. David Pearson, David F. Labaree, Susan FlorioRuane , Lynn Paine, and Anna Neuman provided the mentoring and inspiration to conduct the research for this book. These mentors read multiple drafts of the manuscript, and their individual and collective insight has served only to make it better. I am particularly grateful for P. David Pearson, David F. Labaree, and Susan Florio-Ruane’s theoretical and pragmatic wisdom throughout the evolution of the book. I also benefited greatly from interaction with various people whose support of my research was generous and thoughtful. While I was in Dearborn from 1997 to 1999, I was fortunate to get to know Diane Denaro Frank and Dahan Al-Najjar. I thank them both for their feedback as I negotiated access into the Southend community and as I shared my writing with them. Special thanks go to Karla Bellingar, who assisted me with the transcription of audiotapes and kept me connected to campus life regardless of where my fieldwork and other projects took me. I wish to thank the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services. They generously provided invaluable information about the Arab American community in southeastern Michigan and in the United States. My work was made all the easier because of their support. Drafts of the chapters in this book have been rewritten at a number of institutions where I was in residence for various periods of time. I am particularly grateful to the Spencer Foundation, Michigan State University , the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Their grant support enabled me to do extensive research in the field, and this book would not have been possible without such support. The University of California–Berkeley provided an especially good place to complete the manuscript during the 2003 spring semester. Among the people who have taught me some important things in relation to this book and who have supported my writing are Michael Apple, Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, David Callejo-Perez, Paul Conway, Anna Demetriades, Patricia Edwards, Charles Elster, Norman Fairclough, James Gee, Margaret Gibson, Mary Louise Gomez, Beth 158 Acknowledgments Graue, Doug Hartman, Carole Hahn, Diana Hess, Karl Hostetler, Joan Hughes, Glynda Hull, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Margaret Macintyre Latta, Tom McGowan, Aleidine Moeller, Jim O’Hanlon, Diane Ohlson, Todd Pernicek, Tom Popkowitz, Marcela Raffaelli, Rebecca Rogers, John Rudolph, Keith Sawyer, Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, Kathy Schultz, Simone Schweber, Tracy Silva, Carol Stack, Michael Suleiman, Dave Wilson, Stanton Wortham, and all my students in various courses who have asked me provocative and thoughtful questions in response to my work. At the University of Pennsylvania Press, I thank Peter Agree, my editor, who first heard about my work before it was ever a manuscript and e-mailed me at least once a year to say that he was still interested in helping me produce a book. He, along with Ellie Goldberg, Erica Ginsburg, and Laura Giuliani, provided the generous assistance any prospective book writer would appreciate. Heartfelt thanks go to my family—Kader and Georgia Sarroub, Nina Sarroub-Boyd, Chris Boyd, and Juliette Sarroub Boyd—for their lifelong support and encouragement. Our family’s experiences as immigrants in the United States have had a profound effect on my research and have given me the fortitude to forge ahead. My husband, James D. Le Sueur, is an inspiration to me. His energy and his dedication to his research have had a tremendous vitalizing impact on my work. As my intellectual companion, he has been patient and impatient, encouraging and critical . I will always appreciate the books he has brought into my life and our conversations around them. Our son, Sef Sarroub Le Sueur, brings tremendous joy and peace to every day, and for that I am thankful. The people who deserve my deepest gratitude are the hijabat and their families, their teachers and administrators, and their school district personnel . I wish I could show my appreciation by recognizing each individual here, but anonymity was promised. The hijabat welcomed me into their homes, community, and school lives, and there are not enough ways to express my respect and...