I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced Book Essay
Culture as a System of Oppression If one were to look across the globe with a microscope they would likely be blown away at how much the organisms on this planet differ from one country to the next. More often than not these countries are closer in proximity to each other than the nearest state is to me. Yet somehow the small artificial line between them, known as a border, has caused such vast differences in culture that they might as well be on opposite ends of the Earth. Taking that into consideration, if one actually does look at one corner of the world and quickly hops to the opposite corner they are liable to find some unmistakeably massive differences in culture. The two cultures that fit this description of being highly dissimilar that I will talk about are dominant Yemeni culture versus the dominant American culture I know so well. I know everything about dominant American culture or DAC because I was raised here, so what better way to learn about dominant Yemeni culture than to read the autobiographical account of a girl who was raised there. The book that is imparting this knowledge to me is I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali. The author, a young girl who has lived a life that is just as depressing as it is impressive courageously tells the reader everything that she has been forced to go through in a culture that does not value women or their sanity. On top of the most burning topic, the treatment of women, there are also many other differences between our cultures that I will cover. The components of culture to be discussed, compared and contrasted are morals, traditions and norms. Even though nearly every aspect of culture is inconsistent between Yemen and America, I choose those specific components because I feel like they would bring out the most decisive differences. The first component of culture to be discussed is norms. The norms in America are almost unbelievably different from the norms in Yemen. For one, in Yemen the men