Eli and Lugman undergo their adolescences in America in different ways. Eli is struggling to find a connection to the far away country of his culture, while Lugman is struggling to overcome the oppression of his culture and his family. They are going through adolescence as a search to define themselves, and Eli is using his culture to define himself while Lugman is rebelling against his culture to define himself.
This is similar to the Book of Khalid because Khalid showed the same immaturity of an adolescent trying to define himself, and Khalid tried defining himself by adopting many different aspects of culture.
College is an obvious example of transitioning in which those around me have affected and changed me. In college I am constantly around friends and people, which is different from living at home with a family, so the lessons and learning situations with others are impossible to avoid because they are constant and daily.

Both of these stories reflect the experience of adolescent arab immigrants in America. The difference, however, is that Eli seems to be trying to find a connection to his roots while Lugman resists them. Lugman's story seems much more like a "just trying to fit in" adolescent tale in a sexually repressive household. Eli's story seems to be more about his struggle with his feelings of helplessness as someone young and distant from his heritage.
Like the Book of Khalid and the poetry we've read, these stories deal with the same problems of balancing American culture with Arab roots.
I don't think I can recall one particular event that has brought my "coming of age". I would say it is more of an ongoing thing. Throughout high school I learned from my teachers and peers some of the requirements and responsibilites of adolescence and now that I am in college I have to adapt to taking care of myself and making my own decisions.

The difference in their families and culture had a large influence on the two boys. Eli was greatly influenced by the war and Nour. The war made Eli feel uneasy and gave him a sense of insignificance. Nour helped him find meaning and develop into the character that we see in the end when he speaks out. Lugman is transformed by his social surroundings more that his culture. If anything it seems as though he is losing sight of his culture in order to “fit in”. He continuously tries to impress the people around him at the expense of disobeying his parents and turning his back on the way he was brought up. His obsession with Ann only made matters worse. Even though she was not interested, Ann was all that motivated Lugman through out the story.
I have unfortunately found myself in Lugman’s position. Trying to impress the girl, friends, and siblings even if it meant going against my parents will.

Eli and Lugman told two very different stories about growing up. Both stories were tinted by their Arab roots and their American upbringing. Each reflected the struggle for identity that any adolescent feels, but their cultural backgrounds had a significant influence on their perceptions of the experience. Eli is searching for his Arab identity and finds it in his connection with Nour, whereas Lugman is struggling to be more American despite his family's strong cultural and religious influences on his life.

Like some of poems we have read from Arab American writers, there is a struggle to find a balance between the Arab identity and the American identity. Neither seems to fit entirely and the individual must find a blend that is acceptable both to the individual and to the rest of the world.

In terms of my own transition, I feel that happened in my first year in Texas and at UT. My transition did not deal with a cultural or racial identity crisis, but more of figuring out how I fit in with the Texan culture and how much of my Arkansas upbringing was relevant to the person I was becoming.

In the first story, Eli's adolecense is portrayed through his naivety and innocence when it comes to his family's problems and what is the cause for all the pain and hardship they endure. Eli however, undergoes his transformation into an adult as he becomes more aware of his surroundings and the war in Lebanon, as well as the tremendous impact it has on his family. When his mother's cousin Nour comes to live with his family, the war became all very real to him and affects him greatly. This shows his sense of understanding and maturity. The second story portrays adolesence as Lugman's naivity and lack of knowledge about girls, love, or sex.Lugman undergoes the transition to manhood when he starts getting impure thoughts about a girl who he met scantily dressed in a way that was suggestive on one of his paper routes. He mistakes his lust for this girl as love and thus is no longer a boy. He feels ready for sexual relations with a girl. It is his culture however, as an American Muslim which keeps Lugman chastised with the strong ideals it holds. Eli wants to get in touch more with his Arab side while Lugman is eager to try to fit in the American culture, and it is these goals that propel their transformation. These pieces of short fiction are so much more meaningful in my opinion than any of the poems we have read so far because they really brings each character's feelings to the surface, which enables deeper understanding for what it truly is like to be Arab American. For my personal experience, I'm going to have to say starting college early and how I was forced to become more independent and more adult-like than before, and as I became aware of the college atmosphere, this helped me to start transforming into an adult.

Both of these characters feel alienated. They are basically stuck in between two cultures and are at a loss of what to do. Eli wants to connect with his culture as evident when he tries to listen to his mother's conversations on the phone. It is hard for him to connect though while living in America. He is connected to the war not only because his cousin is kidnapped but because her experience and the suffering of his people makes Eli the sensitive, caring, and mature adult that he is. He fantasizes about the Arab world while Lugman in many ways is repulsed by it. Lugman wants to be apart of American culture yet is still proud of his heritage as evident when Lugman says that "he wallowed in the greatness of the Arabs" when they studied Saladin and the Crusades in school. Like most adolescents he wants to fit in. These two pieces of short fiction are much more "real" in a sense than the poetry we have been reading. It is very easy to apply what these characters are going through to the real world and even to our own lives. I grew up as a American but my parents are immigrants. Sometimes it was hard to keep a balance in between the two cultures. My parents wanted me to behave as Indian as possible because they didn't want me to forget my culture. I on the other hand tried to bring some American aspects into the household because that is the only culture I had ever lived in and that I had experienced first hand.

Eli spends his adolescence trying to come to terms with his connection to Lebanon and the Arabic culture. The civil war and sectarian strife affects him deeply, but he feels removed from it, almost as if he does not have the right to feel upset when those closer to it (his mother, Nour, Tony, etc.) are calm and collected. But they are calm because they have already adjusted to it, and Eli hasn't reached that level of involvement yet. The poem is very important to him, because it provides him with a way of connecting his own soul to his distant relatives in Lebanon.

While Eli seems to be reaching out to his cultural heritage, Lugman seems almost repressed by it. He feels rejected and repulsed by his mother, and the other Arab girls, but his advances towards an American girl is rejected, leaving him lost and defensive.

Similarly to The Book of Khalid, the two readings focused on how an Arab heritage affects interaction and assimilation to American culture in a way that is more explicit than poetry.

I think that with Lugman that his transition into adulthood is just like everyone around him it is basically based on your environment. You are going to have the same worries and inhibitions as the people you grow up with or attend the same school as you but you are just going to look at them in a different retrospect. So of course your culture and the way you are brought up are going to affect the way you look at things and how you react to situations on your way to adulthood as we see with this story. With eli she was brought up with a different culture and never understood the true meanings of things that she said and did and in this story she finds meanings to those things. I would compare this different to other readings becuase here they are not trying to find their identity and want to know what it is to truly be arab american but instead this shows their life with a problem at hand and how they react to it showing how that the way they were brought up causes them to think and react the way they do and that is what makes them different from you and I and in that sense you don't have to know what it is to per say arab american in america because you are just that and through the where and the way you are brought up is what causes you to be different from everyone else and that is your identity. For me I don't think I have fully gone through the adult transition. Yes I live on my own and have to find and cook my own food and have to make myself go to class but I still don't have to pay for college on my own or have to pay my own insurance. I can still call back home if I need help I just have to beg for hours. I think college is the last stage in my road to fully acquiring adulthood where I will become totatlly independent and will have to make decisions on my own and maybe oneday for others.

Eli is coming of age in a household where identity - Maronite, Arab, "too black," positioning the self on issues surrounding the war - is an active area of debate. His maturation is a progression from a fantasy of the Arab world (the origin of romantic love), toward an identification with his Aunt who has experienced the war firsthand, and who, of all the relatives, has the most nuanced understanding of the issues involved.

Lugman, on the other hand, lives in a more repressive environment. On his own, he is beginning to understand what exactly defines him as Arab as opposed to American or generically "ethnic". He is repelled by Arab girls and shamed by his family's restrictive sexually; he is attracted to American girls and the social status they provide. But it is significant that beyond the initial lust brought about by her apparent availability, it is her "ethnicness" that captures him emotionally. As his infatuation grows and fades unrequited, he is setting himself apart from his parents and culture while at the same time beginning to understand why a more familiar partner might be desirable.

Both these stories deal heavily with the formation of identity in an already contested context. The views and identities present in earlier works we have read are present, but largely as older characters, who no longer speak as the authoritative narrator, but as one of many competing voices.

My own adolescent identity underwent its most violent shifts during my time in southeast Asia just after highschool. My struggles to communicate my need for independence to my Thai host family, for example, and my inverse shock at the self-serving close-mindedness of the American missionaries I met there, both served to define what I valued and despised about myself and my culture.

I think they undergo their transformations with the influence of their cultures. I think that their families, how they were brought up, and what they believed in helped them transform. I think that their religion and family history has an impact on who they will become and what they choose to do in life.

In my life i would have to say that i had that transition when someone very close to me passed away right before i moved to austin. I would say that dealing with death helps you grow up quite a bit. When i came here i was forced to be independent as well, and I had to learn to deal with things on my own. so i guess my first year of college is what made my transition.

Culture and being Maronite play large roles in both narratives. In the first piece, it helps with the development of Eli's identity as Nour helps him realize the depth of the words that he has been exposed to for years, but never found true identity in. This is achieved through the presence of war and external conflict, which is reflected in the domestic situation that Eli is in, however the presence of Nour as the source of a new dynamic acts as the catalyst for choosing sides and in turn, developing a voice. This equates to coming of age.

In the second piece, culture acts as a hinderance to coming of age as opposed to a catalyst for the development of Lugman. In his lust for Ann and his desire to be seen as a virile man's man to friends and other member of his community, it seems that Lugman feels as though he has to defy his identity and culture in order to progress.

Situations that I have found myself in align more with the story of Eli in that through various events, I am placed in a position to choose between two conflicting sides and identities. Though I have been a resident Asian-American by default, it has only been recently that I have been aware of my culture and felt the responsibility that comes with awareness to choose sides on various issues facing the Asian American community at large and in my area.

I think that their adulthood was similarily affected by their cultures. While the stories did not seem to reflect a substantial and obvious cultural influence on their adulthood (such as the writer's themselves being involved in war or victims of extensive discrimination), their cultures did have many smaller influences (names, food, stories of ancestors, etc.).
I'm not sure which I would compare this to. In one sense, I would compare this to most of the poetry read so far. In most cases, the poetry is more about the influences of their culture (either explicitly or implicitly). But on the other hand, at some point in the story they take on a more direct approach about culture much like The Book of Khalid.
For my own experience, I think I'll take the obvious route and say that attending college was a huge transition into adulthood. Learning from others really helped me succeed financially and academically. Before, I was completely dependent with no desire for anything else. Now, I am mostly independent and am definitely in or through the adult transition.