The Greater Freedom Book Summary - The Greater Freedom Book explained in key points

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The Greater Freedom summary

Name: The Greater Freedom
Rating: 3.8 (26 reviews)
Author: Alya Mooro

Alya Mooro

Life as a Middle Eastern Woman Outside the Stereotypes

3.8 (26 ratings)

23 mins

Topics

Women's Stories Memoirs Culture

Table of Contents

The Greater Freedom
Summary of 8 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? Learn the unique perspective of a woman growing up between two cultures.

What happens to women who grow up in a tug-of-war between two cultures? What happens when one of those cultures is subject to painful stereotypes by the other?

For an increasingly large Arab diaspora living in Europe and the United States, this question has defined their lives. For Alya Mooro and the dozens of women of Arab descent she interviews, forging an identity in the midst of the mixed messages has been a difficult journey.

In these blinks, we’ll follow along as Mooro recounts her own struggles with the lack of media representation of and for women like her, the pressure to conform to unrealistic Western beauty standards, and her journey toward a healthy relationship with both sex and Islam. Ultimately, Mooro’s challenges will lead her to catharsis, discovery, and self-actualization.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why sex is such a fraught issue for many women in the Arab diaspora;
why media representation is crucially important for kids in immigrant communities; and
why Alya stopped telling people she’s “technically” a Muslim.

As an Arab girl growing up in Britain, Alya felt caught between two cultures.

Growing up, Alya often felt defined by her otherness, rather than her own unique personality traits.

In predominantly white Britain, people of color are often subject to lazy caricature. That’s why people who aren’t white are often confused with other people from the same background. For example, the British media has mistakenly used a photo of the Belgian footballer Lukaku in stories about grime artist Stormzy.

Alya also personally experienced this. At school, she was often confused with other brown girls in her class: another Egyptian girl, as well as a girl who was half Pakistani and half Italian.

But Alya isn’t the only one who has struggled with proactively defining her identity. What “Arab” means has always been unclear: even UNESCO and Wikipedia list different numbers of Arab states. Many nationalities in the Middle East traditionally don’t consider themselves Arabs at all, a feeling shared by Egyptians too.

Diaspora Arabs have had to define their identity in a new way, though. In the melting-pot of London, surrounded by so many other nationalities, Arab identity has crystallized. Alya’s Middle Eastern neighbors and her own family bonded over their similarities, in contrast to the white, British norm.

But even if Alya and her friends identify as Arab, that doesn’t mean there’s a place for them. Arab girls growing up in the UK are often forced to choose between identifying as white or black. This happens in highly segregated schools, as well as on official forms, where “Arab” often isn’t an option.

Looking for role models, she observed that mainstream media doesn’t portray realistic versions of Arab characters. For instance, while representation has gotten better since 9/11, it’s only because there are more stories about terrorism – and Arabs are relegated to playing terrorists.

A study that analyzed television shows in 2015 and 2016 showed that 92 percent of scripted shows had no season regulars of Middle Eastern origins. Of the ones that did, 78 percent appear as terrorists, agents, soldiers, or tyrants, and 67 percent spoke with an accent.

This is especially harmful for children, who see only distorted versions of themselves reflected in the media. Without good role models, kids can become listless, and potentially even perform the stereotype. If society expects Arab children to be angry, it’s a lot easier to actually become that way.

Arab women are under tremendous pressure to look good; an aesthetic which is generally defined by European physical traits.

All women face pressure to be physically attractive, and all women are judged on their appearance. Being attractive opens doors and creates opportunities: this is called the Halo Effect.

But for Arab women, the pressure is more intense. Arab women are held to a higher standard, by society, their families, and themselves. One Egyptian-British friend of Alya’s told her that in London, she frequently does the shopping with her hair tied up, but in Egypt, she wouldn’t dream of it. Worse, she would judge anyone in Egypt who went out with their hair up as slovenly.

Alya went through puberty in both Cairo and London, attuning her to the unique contradictions faced by young Arab women.

When her family moved back to Cairo for a year when she was 13, Alya was devastated. She had to leave the friends it had taken her so long to make. On the first day of her new school, though, she felt welcomed. Many kids were members of her extended family, or had grandparents that had known her grandparents and so she felt like she was part of a community.

There’s a cocoon of safety in everyone knowing everyone, as she learned that first day at school in Cairo. But that’s also why Arab societies can be so stifling, especially for women.

The shame that Alya had internalized about sex set her up for years of traumatic sexual experiences.

When she had sex for the first time, it was under what Alya describes as “really shitty circumstances.” She’d been taught to be conscious, and ashamed, of her body at all times. For her, guilt was inextricable from sexuality.

When she was 15 she met a guy she calls Satan. They exchanged numbers, and he started leaving her long, sappy voicemails. The trouble was, he was her friend’s boyfriend. Alya felt guilty, but thought that this was how you’re supposed to feel when you like someone.

In the Arab world, marriage is another minefield of stifling expectations for women.

When it comes to marriage, Arab women face impossible expectations that completely disregard whatever their individual wishes might be. Not only is the expectation that they get married in the first place, women must marry young, marry the right person, and shoulder the burden for sustaining the marriage for the rest of their lives.

This perception extends to include, for instance, situations like when a man has extra-marital affairs. In such scenarios, it’s widely seen as the wife’s fault for failing to maintain his attention. The same goes for divorce. In a survey of over two thousand respondents across the Arab world, divorced women were usually blamed for failing to keep their husbands happy.

Caught between rising Islamophobia in Britain and her Muslim cultural identity, Alya struggled to find her place.

For years, Alya would tell people she was “technically” a Muslim. She did this because the 9/11 attacks, and the resulting Islamophobia, made her want to de-emphasize her Muslim identity in her British communities.

Even scarier than this, though, is the judgement from practicing Muslims. She constantly lives in the expectation that she’ll be called out as a “bad Muslim.”

Alya’s embrace of feminism stems from troubling experiences she had in both the West and the Middle East.

For many years, Alya didn’t identify as a feminist. She bought into the gendered stereotypes that men are chill and women are crazy. She thought she was an exception to her gender because she didn’t care about makeup and liked football.

Eventually, though, she saw that sexism is all around us, and we internalize certain narratives. For example, a study asked participants to watch a startup pitch and decide whether the company deserved investment. When the pitch was voiced by a man, 68 percent thought the startup should get funding, but when a woman delivered the exact same pitch, only 32 percent said the same.

Alya has learned that, as an immigrant, creating a home is all about perspective.

Alya Mooro is both Arab and British. She is also neither. Worldwide, immigrants and their children, sometimes known as third culture kids, are an increasingly large community. In London, for example, 37 percent of residents were born outside the UK.

Alya realizes that she and many of her friends react to the expectations put on them in their different milieux. In Cairo, she performs English-ness. But in London, she tries hard to act like she’s not one of those Arabs who parks their Lamborghini on the sidewalk and buys out expensive department stores.

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What is The Greater Freedom about?

The Greater Freedom (2019) chronicles one British-Egyptian woman’s struggle to forge her own identity from the two cultures that raised her. Using stories from her own background, detailed research, and interviews with fellow women of the Arab diaspora, author Alya Mooro examines issues including sexuality, Islam, beauty standards, and immigration. She ultimately finds that there is freedom in choosing to exist in-between established tropes of culture, nationality, and identity.

Who should read The Greater Freedom?

Modern women reckoning with their conservative upbringing
Anyone who has ever felt self-conscious about their appearance
Anyone whose family is more religious than they are

About the Author

Alya Mooro is a British-Egyptian author and journalist who has contributed on topics of culture, beauty, and fashion to publications including Grazia, Refinery29, and The Telegraph. Using social media and her blog as platforms, she has come to embody the millennial third culture kid: sophisticated, introspective, and opinionated.

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