Questions and Assignments for Kathleen Jamie’s “Shia Girls”

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS FOR KATHLEEN JAMIE’S “SHIA GIRLS”

Read Kathleen Jamie’s essay “Shia Girls.” Below, you’ll find some questions that invite you to work further with the selection.

QUESTIONS FOR A SECOND READING

1.

“Shia Girls” takes us into writing that resembles both a travelogue and a personal essay. As such, it invites readers unfamiliar with its geographies, traditions, and terms to research them — to learn, for example, what the town of Gilgit in Pakistan looks like, the meaning of “Inshallah,” and “purdah-observing,” the description and role of a “black dupatta,” and “shalwar-kameez,” the beliefs of Shia people, and the position and policies of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Question

As you reread “Shia Girls,” make a running list of unfamiliar places, names, and terms. Use the Internet and other resources to annotate your list, and be prepared to discuss what you learned about each item and how this research affects your reading of “Shia Girls.”

2.

Question

Jamie writes “I suppose that to know someone or something is to see them through change.” As you reread, mark those moments where Jamie observes and reports on change. Take notes on the specific changes that seem significant to her. Why are they significant, and how do they figure into her writing? Is Jamie writing primarily about change, or is change a part of another project that she’s writing about? Be prepared to discuss these questions from your notes.

3.

Question

Early in her essay, Jamie quotes two paragraphs from Rashida’s letter. As you reread, imagine that Jamie has framed her essay with these paragraphs of Rashida’s for certain reasons. What might be those reasons? Locate passages that help you to make claims about why Jamie framed her essay this way. Take notes on your thinking about these passages and be prepared to discuss her use of Rashida’s writing.

4.

Question

“Shia Girls” is taken from Jamie’s book Among Muslims. In an essay on her work in The Guardian, Jamie is quoted as saying, “Because I was a woman I was co-opted into Muslim families in a way a man couldn’t be; I got beyond the garden wall.” As you reread, mark those moments where Jamie seems to be observing and reporting on access to Muslim families that she’s gained through her status as a woman. As you study these moments, takes notes on what she has to say. Be prepared to use your notes to discuss the arguments that Jamie could be said to be making about her position as a woman.

ASSIGNMENTS FOR WRITING

1.

One of the challenges of Jamie’s essay is knowing what to make of it. While the essay is made up of episodes and conversations, the piece seems to have no single controlling idea; it does not move from thesis to conclusion. One way of reading the essay is to see what one can make of it, to determine that to which it might add up. In this sense, the work of reading is to find an idea, passage, image, or metaphor — some point of reference in the text — and use that reference point to organize your reading of the essay.

Question

When you have identified a single point of reference, use it to organize your reading of Jamie’s essay. Take notes on the relation of this reference point to other key moments in the essay. Write an essay in which you explain your point of reference and what it allows you to say about Jamie’s project in “Shia Girls.”

2.

Jamie recreates numerous conversations with others throughout her essay. For this assignment, mark those conversations in some way so that you can read them in succession. When you’ve done that, identify two or three that you can discuss in an essay about these conversations. Why are such dialogues so prominent in her essay? What does she accomplish with them? Why would she choose to recreate conversations such as these, rather than simply report on them?

Question

Write an essay in which you work from at least two of Jamie’s longer examples of conversations (at least a page in length) to draw conclusions about what these particular conversations allow her to do as a writer and the ways in which they could be said to be a central aspect of her project in “Shia Girls.”

3.

Question

When asked in The Guardian if she thinks of herself as a political writer, Jamie replies: “Can you tell from reading my work that I have any political awareness? Well, yes, I say, certainly — but put on the spot, I can’t call any specific examples to mind. It’s more a mood, strong but diffuse: an atmosphere of egalitarianism.” As you reread, locate those moments in which you think Jamie is working from a position of political awareness. Write an essay in which you explain how two or three of these moments represent the kind of “political awareness” and “atmosphere of egalitarianism” of which Jamie speaks.

4.

Please reread the conversation between Jamie and Rashida starting with paragraph 150 and ending with paragraph 167.

This section serves as a good example of the unique style Jamie employs when recreating conversation. The essay is peppered with conversations that unfold in a “she-said, I-said, I-noticed-this, she-said, I-said,” movement. It’s a way of writing conversation that also allows her to comment on what she notices during the dialogue.

Question

For this assignment, try your hand at imitating this aspect of Jamie’s writing. You’ll need to create or recreate a conversation with at least one other person that you can write out in the way Jamie does. Your goal is to produce at least a page of text equivalent in length to Jamie’s. Write to capture the language of the person or people speaking so that readers can distinguish speakers. Be sure as well to work your own quick observations into the conversation the way Jamie does.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

1.

Mary Louise Pratt, in her essay “The Arts of the Contact Zone,” (p. 315 of the print book) describes the writing that one might find in a contact zone as such:

Autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression — these are some of the literate arts of the contact zone. Miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, absolute heterogeneity of meaning — these are some of the perils of writing in the contact zone. (p. 324 of the print book)

She then goes on to define the pedagogical arts of the contact zone:

These will include, we are sure, exercises in storytelling and in identifying with the ideas, interests, histories, and attitudes of others; experiments in transculturation and collaborative work and in the arts of critique, parody, and comparison (including unseemly comparisons between elite and vernacular cultural forms); the redemption of the oral; ways for people to engage with suppressed aspects of history (including their own histories), ways to move into and out of rhetorics of authenticity; ground rules for communication across lines of difference and hierarchy that go beyond politeness but maintain mutual respect; a systematic approach to the all-important concept of cultural mediation. (p. 329 of the print book)

Question

Jamie’s “Shia Girls” could be seen as an example of the kinds of writing and pedagogy that Pratt believes typify contact zones. Reread “Shia Girls” alongside “The Arts of the Contact Zone.” Then, write an essay that presents “Shia Girls” through the lens of Pratt’s essay. How would you describe the particular contact zone evoked in Jamie’s essay? What moments from “Shia Girls” might best serve as examples of the writing and pedagogy Pratt describes as hallmarks of the contact zone? How would you explain them as such?

2.

Walker Percy, in his essay “The Loss of the Creature,” (p. 297 of the print book) develops a metaphor of tourists observing the Grand Canyon to make arguments about the ways in which a preconceived “symbolic complex” prevents tourists from actually seeing the sites they’ve come to see — in this case, the Grand Canyon itself. The tourists, Percy argues, instead see whatever it is they expect to see. As you reread “Shia Girls” alongside “The Loss of the Creature,” identify moments and language in Percy’s essay that you could use to explore the preconceived symbolic complexes that you bring to reading “Shia Girls.” Mark the passages in “Shia Girls” where you think you’re behaving like Percy’s tourists or like his student trying to study the dogfish. What is getting between you and those passages?

Question

Write an essay in which you reflect on your reading of specific passages in Jamie’s essay, using Percy’s ideas and language to identify your preconceived notions or beliefs or impressions — the symbolic complexes — that could be said to influence, shape, or even prevent your understanding of Jamie’s passages.