I’m Yusif, a Palestinian-American from an immigrant family. I have a particular infatuation with writing and reading, and love (at least in school) to study, write about, and learn about literature. Arabic is my first language, but learning English young was quickly followed by the passion to read it, and eventually the passion to write it.

But reading and writing aren’t the only things I enjoy, obviously. I love movies and T.V shows, and I love to play and watch sports. I’m also in the gym almost every day, and I’ve worked at Wawa for the past 3 years.

Prior to moving to the Hatboro area in my junior year of high school, I had only left Philly once, to go to Palestine. In pretty much every Palestinian kid’s young life, their parents will take them on a trip to the homeland in order to get integrated in the culture, language, even meet distant relatives and understand what it means to be Palestinian. I would say this trip has been a defining moment in my life, even though it was over 10 years ago.

Living in a small village in the middle of the desert has been, retrospectively, such an enlightening experience. Juxtaposed to flicking marbles into little holes in the street and playing barefoot soccer on dusty roads, having phones, internet and movies and whatever else seems such a privilege. There’s a tick in my mind every time I shower that reminds me of having to heat pots up on the stove to shower with hot water. There’s a constant reminder in the back of my mind of the immeasurable privilege it is to live in this country, even with all the injustices. This knowledge is something I pride myself and a lot of my beliefs on.

I want to (eventually) be a writer. And as countless authors and teachers have imprinted into my brain, in order to write you must read. And to even delve further into that, you must understand and interpret the readings. I have certainly felt that throughout this course, I have grown as a writer, even though there was hardly any writing involved.

My favorite author is Khaled Hosseini. He wrote classics like The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

I would say these books changed a lot for me. They made me realize a lot about myself, how much I truly care about my race and my ethnicity. They made me understand what writing could do, how it could enlighten someone. They made me want to write and have since inspired my writing. Khaled’s writing inspired a lot of what I write about in these blog posts, as well. They are beautiful books that I highly, highly recommend.

I believe his writing is so supremely important to me because he is world-renown and writes about the things that no one wants to talk about or acknowledge. Instead of allowing the world to continue to see Afghanistan, and at large the Middle East, as the bearded terrorists, Hosseini’s writing paints them as the scared children or parents they are. Hosseini humanizes who Western media never tries to, and that was so important for me growing up.

This blog has provided the unique ability to categorize and list my thoughts over the course of an entire semester. It’s given me the opportunity to reflect on the way I looked at readings, how I interpreted them, and what I gathered from them. In a way, its reflection-ception.

And throughout that reflection, I noticed how much I write about race. I write about it in books that directly involve it, that don’t. I feel like it is intrinsically connected to all that we read and write, regardless of if we are aware of it or not (Shoutout to Death of the Author). 

This is something I really hope to convey through my blog posts. Just how important these things are in our daily lives, the world around us, and the literature we read. That’s what I’ve gained most from the blog, and from the experience in the course thus far. The ability to better articulate these swirling feelings I’ve had. The refining of my conveying them to an audience, having true thoughts instead of bubbles of emotion. I’m very grateful to have gained and grown that skill.

In understanding my feelings regarding the topics, new questions have sprouted as well. In the course of our readings and our blog posts, I have understood so much more about where I stand on certain topics and how to get those feelings across, and that is something I’ll endlessly be grateful for. Not only through my writing, but even in my presentations I feel like I got my complicated ideas across clearer than I could’ve ever hoped for.

I genuinely hope through what I’ve said in class, my blog posts, or my presentations have at least instilled one new idea about race in people’s minds in this class. I hope at least one thing I say or said has resonated with somebody, made them nod their head, or made them think. That’s what I hope to have achieved, and that hope is in of itself something I gained from this class.

Speaking of gaining from this class, every member of this class informed my thoughts and opinions in some way. I want to really emphasize just how much the classroom environment this semester was contributed to by every member of the classroom and how beautiful of an environment it ended up being. Every single student in the class really did a great job expressing themselves through their work and I truly feel like I gained something of importance every time one of you raised your hands!

Overall, though, it has been a wonderful experience in the class and I feel like what I gained in the class is stuff that I’ll never lose. Thank you so much to every member of ENGL 201.