Rhoda Kanaaneh, "The Right Kind of Suffering: Gender, Sexuality, and Arab Asylum Seekers in America" (U Texas Press, 2023)

Oct 10, 2023

Anthropologist and volunteer interpreter, Rhoda Kanaaneh, discusses the asylum system in the United States and the storytelling challenges faced by Arab asylum seekers. The podcast explores the impact of the asylum process on identities and relationships, the complexities faced by interpreters, and the significant amount of time it takes for the asylum process. It concludes with a discussion on future plans and collaborative research.

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Introduction

00:00 • 5min

Challenges and Narratives in the Asylum Process

05:12 • 25min

Complexity and Complicity in the Asylum System

30:15 • 3min

The Impact of Time on Asylum Seekers and the Writing Process

33:42 • 6min

Future Plans and Collaborative Research

39:41 • 2min

From the overloaded courts with their constantly changing dates and appointments to the need to prove oneself the “right" kind of asylum seeker, the asylum system in the United States is an exacting and drawn-out immigration process that itself results in suffering. When anthropologist Rhoda Kanaaneh became a volunteer interpreter for Arab asylum seekers, she discovered how applicants learned to craft a specific narrative to satisfy the system's requirements.

Kanaaneh tells the stories of four Arab asylum seekers who sought protection in the United States on the basis of their gender or sexuality: Saud, who relived painful memories of her circumcision and police harassment in Sudan and then learned to number and sequence these recollections; Fatima, who visited doctors and therapists in order to document years of spousal abuse without over-emphasizing her resulting mental illness; Fadi, who highlighted the homophobic motivations that provoked his arrest and torture in Jordan, all the while omitting connected issues of class and racism; and Marwa, who showcased her private hardships as a lesbian in a Shiite family in Lebanon and downplayed her environmental activism. The Right Kind of Suffering: Gender, Sexuality, and Arab Asylum Seekers in America (U Texas Press, 2023) is a compelling portrait of Arab asylum seekers whose success stories stand in contrast with those whom the system failed.

Rhoda Kanaaneh has taught anthropology and gender and sexuality studies at Columbia University, American University, New York University, and Fordham University. She is the editor of Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender Among Palestinians in Israel and author of Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military and Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel.

Alize Arıcan is a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University and an incoming Assistant Professor of Anthropology at CUNY—City College, focusing on urban renewal, futurity, care, and migration. You can find her on Twitter @alizearican.

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