GROWING up Nokomi Achkar was raised by a "fiercely strong" mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
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The woman in her family incorporated their culture into day-to-day life in a way that gave Ms Achkar, the first generation of her family to be born in Australia, a rich sense of self identity.
Now a Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services community engagement coordinator, Ms Achkar has contributed a chapter to a new book which unpacks the depth and diversity of Arab Australian experience.
Ms Achkar's contribution is a bit funny, very honest, very raw, heartfelt, and really - as she described it to her mother - it's a love letter to the women in her family.
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The work, Arab Australian Other: Stories of Race and Identity, collates the experience of more than 20 authors from different Arab backgrounds.
Ms Achkar has noticed the idea of belonging or not belonging pervades many of the stories.
This sense of isolation can come from the difficulty many people feel finding their place in Australia, even within Arab communities, she said.
Honouring your culture can be fraught in a country where the dominant culture is very different to your own, Ms Achkar said.
And having your culture accepted and celebrated can be problematic in an Australia, not even a century on from the white Australia policy.
Ms Achkar's own family was lucky to be granted visas to come to Australia. Her mother and grandmother were told at the embassy in Lebanon that they looked white enough to come to Australia.
Arriving in Australia they found so much to learn.
For Ms Achkar's generation - the first born here - it meant they had to figure out how to navigate their home culture and the culture of the wider community.
Her contribution is a memoir, but with the bent common to stories her mother and grandmother told, sometimes based on fact, sometimes with an embellishment or two.
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As a love letter to the women in her family, it recognises their courage and contribution to raising her.
And it's allowed her to trace back her dreams to the women on whose shoulders she's stood.
"I've been raised in a family of women, these incredibly powerful... courageous, loyal, fiercely loving capable women. I've been raised with the capacity to choose, and I've been raised with the knowledge that I'm as capable as anyone else," Ms Achkar said.
"They have been so authentic in the way that they've raised me and my siblings. They were really casual about incorporating our culture into everyday life, that's how we lived at home.
"Our culture and our spirituality, and our faith, or the things that formed us were just done in such a matter of fact way. I wanted to honour that because it's given me such a rich sense of self identity ... and history."
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