Museum offers tales of young Arabs since 9/11

By Jeff Karoub Associated Press DETROIT (AP) -- In a Michigan city where events in the Middle East hit home, a museum launched a month-long exhibit Saturday featuring stories and photos by mostly Arab-American middle school students chronicling their lives as the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaches. The exhibit, "In the Heart of Arab America: A Middle School Perspective," kicked off with an afternoon reception at the Arab American National Museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, which has one of the nation's largest and best-known Arab communities. Seventh-grade journalism students from McCollough-Unis School created the exhibit during the last school year through a project sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association called The Living Textbook. The goal was to help students -- nearly all of whom are Arab-American -- learn about journalism and write stories about their community. Although the anniversary of the terrorist attacks serves as a backdrop, the exhibits largely reflect another reality: The students are among the first Americans to grow up with no memory of life before Sept. 11, 2001. Some students dealt with the topic in their art work, though most opted to capture everyday events, such as fellow classmates at work and play, Detroit Tigers' games and Thanksgiving dinners with all the trimmings -- including hummus and tabbouleh. "Whether it's about 9/11 or anything else, journalism is a way for you to let out your words -- on more than just a piece of paper," said Nour Eidy, 13, whose contributions to the exhibit include a photo taken off a window sill of students working on an art project and another of a girl holding a very large soap bubble in her hand as she cleaned up in cooking class. "It opens you up to a whole new world," she said. "Once you think about it, nobody can tell a story better than you can." Jamila Nasser, 13, also opted to photograph images around her: students jumping hurdles during a track meet and a sunset over a lake at a city camp that she said looks as though "there's two different suns." Nasser said the project also inspired her to write a story about the choice of many Muslim girls at her school to wear a hijab, or head scarf. She doesn't wear one, but she counted and found far more who do than don't. The Living Textbook, funded by philanthropic foundations, continues for two more years. It's directed by two former Detroit journalists, Emilia Askari of the University of Michigan and Joe Grimm of Michigan State University. The Asian-American journalists' group holds its annual convention Aug. 10-13 in Detroit. Topics include the aftermath of 9/11 in the Arab-American community. ---------------- Online: Exhibit excerpts: http://livingtextbook.aaja.org. Published: Wed, Jul 6, 2011