National Arab Heritage Month

Being raised by secular Arab immigrants has taught me that the voice of the liberal Arab has been extinguished in today’s media and society, and growing up I was determined to find my place in the community. Eager to explore my identity at Hawken, I joined the Arab American affinity group. The deep conversations, quiet moments of reflection, and funny stories we told always brought me peace and joy.

As I grew, so did my role in the affinity group. In my sophomore year, I was elected the new leader. I noticed a decline in membership and began working to expand our community. To kick-start this process, I created several projects: I wanted to have Middle Eastern representation somewhere in our curriculum, and I wanted to celebrate my heritage with the Hawken at-large community. While you may sit there and think to yourself, “Um, Sarah that’s two things,” but they turned out to be significantly easier said than done.

Now, as a senior, I can confidently say that I have made quite a dent in this small but mighty list. I created a course proposal for a Middle East Studies 9^th-grade humanities class, which was recently approved and introduced to students; furthermore, I coordinated a National Arab Heritage month celebration. But I didn’t want this to be just any celebration. I wanted to bring in students from neighboring schools that shared my eagerness to discuss our bond of heritage and to build a sense of pride and peace for our identities. I think that in seeing the decline in membership, I realized that the issue wasn’t a lack of Middle Eastern Hawken students at Hawken, but rather a surplus of fear and a deficit of courage to share and to self-explore. In this celebration, I wanted to show my community that there are people brave enough to talk, and that it is a safe space for whomever that may be. Moreover, I believe there is power in listening; that not all of us are ready to talk, and that that’s okay.