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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: As an Arab girl raised in Britain, Alya often felt torn between two cultures.
Chapter 2: Arab women face immense pressure to appear attractive; a beauty ideal that is generally defined by European physical traits.
Chapter 3: Alya went through puberty in both Cairo and London, making her attuned to the unique contradictions confronting young Arab women.
Chapter 4: The shame that Alya had internalized around sex primed her for years of traumatic sexual experiences later.
Chapter 5: Across the Arab world, marriage is another minefield of suffocating expectations for women.
Chapter 6: Caught between rising Islamophobia in Britain and her Muslim cultural identity, Alya struggled to find her footing.
Chapter 7: Alya’s embrace of feminism arises from troubling experiences she had in both the West and the Middle East.
Chapter 8: Alya has discovered that, as an immigrant, making a home is all about perspective.
Description
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 Listen
- 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