HW 32: Meeting Riverbend
I’ve been fortunate enough to have already read a bit of the book Baghdad Burning by the blogger only known to her audiences as ‘Riverbend’. After scanning the book and reading the foreword and introduction, I think I’ve jogged most of my memory and brought up some of the same emotions I felt back when I read the book the first time. Blogging, as I’ve already discussed throughout my own blog, has in the past few years emerged as a new means of communication amongst people across America who believe the media doesn’t offer the raw truth behind what is really going on in the country (and more importantly, the world). Because of the way the media portrays Iraq, we have subconsciously dehumanized the Iraqi people. We tend to think of them as a barbaric culture as a whole—who can’t speak English, who are violent and animalistic, and can’t even use computers or the internet. In reading Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq by the Iraqi female known only as Riverbend, I have come to realize that the only way to truly understand just how similar we Americans are to the suffering people of Iraq, is by hearing about their life, first hand, from an Iraqi citizen. Riverbend has helped shed light on the going-ons of Iraq, the corruption, the horrible living conditions, the dangers of daily life, and the unstable setup of the government with its 9 equally unstable presidents. By reading her blog entries we can only begin to understand what the daily life is like for an Iraqi woman, and we can finally begin to understand that they are just as human as we sheltered Americans are.
