The Female Gaze

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Harrisonburg 360 podcast. I'm your host, Elena Alkins. The Harrisonburg 360 podcast is an attempt to capture and record narratives of immigrants living in the Harrisonburg community. Using past and present voices of Harrisonburg immigrants, students in our J.M.U. English class have collaborated to create a space focused on the importance of listening to each other's voices. Every person deserves a chance to share their story, and we, as a class, are privileged to share these stories with you, and hopes of expanding perceptions of what it means to be an immigrant and Harrisonburg. [Music] Each week, Harrisonburg 360 is produced by a different team of students. This week's episode was produced by Elena Alkins, Jordan Zab, Gabriella Powell, and Electra Ellis. In this week's episode, we'll be discussing two female immigrants who came to the Shenandoah Valley, Lynn Buchanan, a Filipino immigrant, and Hibba Ali, who we had the privilege of interviewing, a Syrian immigrant. While each woman shared many important and interesting details in their stories, their specific experiences as women immigrants shed sight onto the independence, resilience, and empowerment, a female immigrant narratives. These two women's stories, in many ways, contrast one another, but also come together to both reflect the strength of women, reminding us that there is no one way that a woman experiences things, or that immigrants experience their journey. In addition to female empowerment across intersections, Lynn and Hibba's stories also remind us of the ways in which immigrants either hold onto or let go of their culture from their home country. Once again, highlighting the multitude of ways immigrants choose to forge their own path and live their own story. [Music] Lynn Buchanan was interviewed in October of 2014 as a part of the Life in the Valley Oral History Project. When she was 25, Lynn married a 70-year-old American man and came to the United States from the Philippines. She became very close with him, and after immigrating to the United States, dependent on him for nearly everything. However, because of their age difference, her husband knew she would need to learn to live a life without him. Shortly before he passed, Lynn describes how she began to regain more independence and autonomy in her life. Just a year before my husband died, he moved me out of the house, basically, but I was the most people who would say that. But not really that way. He was worried because he was 79 at that time, because he died at 79. And he was worried because I was so dependent. And, well, it's kind of sad, but at the same time, he's right. I was spoiled. My life with him was so easy. He said that if something would happen to him, it would make him a lot more worried about what's going to happen to me. This girl, she won't drive. She won't go to the mall by herself. She has to be with me. I wouldn't mind if I practiced my driving, but it's okay with me as long as he's with me right there. I somehow was just thinking that way that everything is okay. He was there. So I'm not used to being by myself. He said, "I'm going to need to learn and to be on my own because when something happened to him, I have to be ready." But I didn't really believe that's what he was doing. I didn't understand why do I have to move out of the house and be on my own. And I enrolled in school. He said, "Except by what we're doing, this to train you to be on your own because if something happened to me, you're going to have to do it." So I went to the National College, took some computer classes, and he would come to school, checked my oil of my car, make sure I have a colon. Immigrant to Mary, a United States citizen, are eligible for a marriage-based green card. This status grants them a permanent resident title and allows them to apply for a job anywhere in the US. While these were the means that allowed Lynn to come to the United States, her husband's death did not allow her to continue to depend on someone else for her economic as well as general well-being. When faced with a lack of support, Lynn did what she had to do in order to create and sustain a life for herself in the United States. Despite coming here with assistance and dependence on someone else, Lynn was able to make the transition to a life on her own. Our next speaker, Hibba, came to the United States on a student visa with her son's father, her ex-husband. While she was with him for some time after immigrating to the United States, the relationship was physically abusive. Although Lynn and Hibba had very different experiences immigrating to the United States, each was placed into situations where they were forced to become more independent as single women and a single mother. Both came to the United States with the intention of having a husband or partner in their life, but their individual circumstances did not allow for this to be true. As their lives began to change, each woman found ways to take care of and provide for themselves. Actually, it was a bit of a domestic violence issue, even though we don't open up about these things and for a long time I felt like this is something I don't want to share with the world. I felt embarrassed of rather than the other person should have been embarrassed of his actions. I feel like for me being in the US was an eye-opener as a woman, because even though I say we are pretty open as a country, and I do feel like in comparison with other countries and cultures, women in Syria are have a bit more empowerment, but there's still that cultural aspect where you feel like. Obligated to stay in a relationship and a marriage, people will talk about you if you get divorced, you'll be looked at differently. So I remember the day I decided to, that I'm done, I took my son and I went to my parents' house. And at that point, both me and my ex, we were on a kind of agreement that this is not going to work anymore. And being in America made me feel much stronger in my decision, and I wasn't afraid, like I said, of the cultural aspects, rather I felt that I was doing the right thing. And when I explained in her clip, she first felt embarrassed about her situation, which led her not to leave her ex-husband or share what she was going through with her friends or family. While this is a common sentiment among women and abusive relationships, one in four women have been the victim of physical domestic violence, and on a typical day, there are more than 200,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines in the United States. And sometimes, like Hibba, women will leave the situation once they feel it has reached a certain point of things that will not be able to change, or there is in child involved that they want to protect. Even though Hibba was afraid of how her family would react, she received support from both her mother and sister as she left her abusive situation. While society in the US in many ways empowered Hibba to leave her abusive relationship, she importantly noted that women in both Syria and the US have autonomy. However, oftentimes the institution of marriage and a family's friends or even a community's perception of a woman leaving a marriage in Syria may have been viewed differently than it was in the United States. Even though Hibba was afraid of how her family would react, she received support from both her mother and father as she left her abusive situation. The stories of Lynn and Hibba provide two different examples across time, cultures and regions in which immigrant women were placed in difficult situations, and as a result, demonstrated their power, resilience, strength, and independence to overcome these adversities. Lynn and Hibba's stories highlight that there are multitude of ways women can and do find ways to act independently and exercise their autonomy. Immigrant women, regardless of their experiences in story, find ways to support themselves or their families. As they endure the challenges that can come with the immigrant experience, which is often different or increased because of their gender, women like Lynn and Hibba find unique in different ways to ensure their success and create their own story in the United States. Becoming more resilient and independent women is not the only place that Lynn and Hibba's stories intersect. Each woman also shows unique and different ways to engage with their home country's culture after coming to the United States. For Lynn in many ways, this meant abandoning some of her previous culture and assimilating more to the United States way of life. For Hibba however, she kept strong ties to her Syrian heritage, wanting not only to remember and honor it for herself, but also to educate others. While their experiences as women in many ways bonded the two, making their stories more like than different. is important to note that shared gender does not inherently mean shared experiences. Through how Lynn and Hibba chose to interact with their culture, they represent the uniqueness and diversity that comes with the immigrant experiences in America. When Lynn came to the United States, in many ways, she chose to abandon parts of her culture from the Philippines to better assimilate into the American society. Cultural assimilation in the United States is often known as Americanization, and often leads to many immigrants to adapt more to the ways of life around Lynn and America opposed to keeping their own traditions and culture. This often means giving up things like language, traditions, or even religion, but sometimes even physical occurrences such as clothing. It can also be deeper and change the way a person lives, including their values or their family structure. In this clip, we hear Lynn describe some of the ways in which she became more accustomed and assimilated into American culture. I didn't have a lot of Filipino friends. I have a lot more Filipino back, my visayan, but for a while, I didn't have any friends for 10 years, Filipino friends. The friends I had were all Caucasian. I've heard a few stories that, "Oh, Lynn, this is from Filipino." I was like, "Oh, Lynn is English Sarah." Because I just keep speaking in English. So, it's like, "Well, they didn't know that for years, I had to speak in English." And then I have a question, "Homerid also an American." But then, for me, I had this thing that it's rude to speak in other language if there's somebody here beside me because my husband is always with me. I'm not going to speak in Filipino if my husband's with me. I think it's rude if he wouldn't understand what I'm talking about. New country, you've never been here before. We're the first things that you notice that surprised you are. In the Philippines, in the morning, there you can see your neighbors. You can already talk to your neighbors. And here, it was in the spring that I arrived in April of '98. It's cold and then I noticed, like, your neighbors always in a rush. Everyone's going, "Say, first the neighbor, like, you don't talk to people, you didn't get to hang out that much." And the distance of places to go. Because for here, I guess, because we drive, it's a lot easier. You have your own car. Because we're really, we have to go get on the gypni in the Philippines. And it's not that far, but we get there. But here, everything is in distance, but still we can make it. Like many immigrants, Lynn chose to let go of certain aspects of her own culture to better fit into life in the United States. In order to do so, it also meant avoiding any association or contact with other Filipino immigrants in the community and their way of living. Unlike Lynn, Hibba has strongly held on to aspects of her Syrian culture. From food to music to even her own personal characteristics and ideas of family and community. Although Hibba chose a different path when it came to culture, these stories highlight the multitude of ways in which women, immigrants, choose to act once they arrive. There is not one correct way to be an immigrant, especially when it comes to how one chooses to live their life once arriving in the United States. Hibba shared how important it was for her son, who was born in the United States, to experience, learn about, and better understand the culture she loves so much. Additionally, Hibba expressed a very strong interest in sharing her culture with others in the Harrisonburg community. She wants people to understand Syrian culture and the beauty and excitement of the region, opposed to viewing the Middle East as a place overtaken by war and violence. Hibba even created a business idea for the cultural center and Harrisonburg where people could gather and learn more about the history and culture of Syria. Historically, Syria, notably Hibba's hometown of Damascus, has been a place filled with history and culture. Many of these traditions and values, as expressed by Hibba, are centered around family. These important ideas related to family and community are values that reflect how Hibba has chosen to live her life in the United States and how she has continued to pass those values along to her son. Most of our people are like, "You would not go to somebody, not their door, not be invited in. You always have somebody answering you or welcoming you in the social life, the family being there for one another. Wherever you walk in Damascus or in Syria, you'll find this building belonged to this civilization, which was maybe a thousand years ago or a hundred thousands of years ago, rather, to say. That's always like, it gives you such an enrichment, you know, background. That's how my idea for the business, let's say, I wanted something to link my memories and stories that I'd now my son, but something that he can feel, because for me, like, if I have a certain smell, like a jasmine smell, Damascus is known to be the city of Jasmine. So I'm like, "That smell reminds me of Syria." You always feel like you have to sense something to relate to it, you know? Coming from Syria and being having the war there, you feel like a lot of people have the, not the right idea of Syria, especially if you haven't been. So I really wanted to have like a cultural place where people are able to know one another and I love cultures and I love the mix of cultures. So I was like, the only way for me right now, for my son to know where I came from, is to cook the stuff for him. I would cook some food and then I'm like, "I ate my grandma's house when I was Christmas." And it's so beautiful and then I would show him pictures. I'm like, "You see that one day you'll go that. We'll go to Syria and you'll see it." We hope that after sharing the stories of Len and Hibba, we have provided a greater and more comprehensive understanding of the experiences of women immigrants. As women around the world are linked by common experiences of their gender, they become strong, resilient and independent. While these characteristics connect them, there is still great diversity and individuality in the choices, lives, and cultures of immigrant women. Thank you for joining us today on Harrisonburg 360. We're grateful to Hibba for participating in an interview with us, as well as Len for her past participation in an interview. Their willingness to share their stories and personal experiences is both humbling and appreciated. Our host today was Elena Elkins. Interview with Hibba Oli was conducted by Jordan Zap. Our research and content producer was Gabriella Powell. And our audio producer was Elektra Ellis. We would also like to thank Kate Morris, Odin, Amiote, Sarah Roth-Mullet, and Kirsten Mollody-Dinja. Thank you for all their wonderful help with this project. We also encourage you to visit our forthcoming social media accounts. You can find us on Facebook at Harrisonburg 360, Twitter at 360, Harrisonburg, and Instagram @Hersonburg360B. You can also find us with the #Hersonburg360. [Music] Harrisonburg 360. Meal people. Real stories. One community.