1
Yi Ping Wu
ANTH 1105
Prof. Ludovici
Memo 1
The first chapter of the book Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt
by Farha Ghannam, the author talked about masculinity, where she talked about how masculinity
is “not fixed, complete, or fully established but has to be re-created and reasserted in different
settings.” The chapter explores the life of a boy named Ahmed that lives in al-Zawiya, a working
class neighborhood in Cairo. One argument that the author stresses in the chapter is a concept of
materializing masculinity, where it is a continuous process where boys and men have to conform
to societal expectations of a real man. On the other hand, she mentioned there is a second type of
men who are the pretenders of men. A real man in Ghannam’s words is tough but reasonable,
controls their wife but does not oppress her. A pretender would be the opposite, is someone that
controls their wife and suffocates them, asserting his authority through violence are a few
examples.
In the chapter, Ghannam gives examples of how Ahmed is raised to become a man by his
mother, Hiba, by how he was given increasingly harder tasks to cultivate his manhood such as
buying bread and handling money. The way Ghannam gathers her data for her arguments is by
observing the life of Ahmed through many years. She watches how his interactions with family
and society changed as he progressively became older. She also had many interviews and casual
conversations with Ahmed’s family members such as the mother, Hiba, an important figure in
how Ahmed was raised.
2
I don’t have any particular questions about the author’s conclusions and I actually agree
when the author talks about how “A proper man is not created by or through a simple binary
opposition between male and female but through elaborate differentiation between modes of
doing and being a man.” This is the passage or quote I think we should discuss in class.