Combining evocative and analytic autoethnography, I explore the ambiguous and ambivalent relationship between conversion, “going native,” and socialization through a case study of my own experience. I examine fieldnotes written during my two-year marriage to a Zanzibari man and audio recordings from my linguistic ethnographic fieldwork among Zanzibari women during the same period, not only revealing my own previously concealed secrets but also arguing for the value of such revelations. I demonstrate how I was lured into “becoming Swahili” because of the relationships “Swahiliness” enabled me to build with my interlocutors in the field and thus the access to ethnographic secrets it gave me. Paradoxically, doing so socialized me into a culture of secrecy that not only restricted my research but also endangered me. I conclude by drawing parallels to a culture of secrecy in academia, where norms about what is appropriate to include in scholarship prevented me, until recently, from sharing the negative aspects of “going native” through marriage and conversion.

Using a framework of critical multiculturalism and contrasting it to liberal and conservative approaches to multiculturalism (Kubota, 2004), this article offers a critical analysis of the representations of Swahili users and their cultures in five widely used introductory Swahili as a foreign language textbooks. Findings indicate that while one book takes a conservative approach to multiculturalism, the liberal approach dominates, with reference made to both coastal Swahili first language users and a variety of second language users. However, because all of the textbooks discuss a singular abstract culture without connecting it to any of the categories of Swahili users they identify, the result of both liberal and conservative approaches is a failure to teach culture. The article concludes with suggestions for using critical multiculturalism to help learners understand the diverse linguistic and cultural practices and perspectives of language users rather than abstract notions of a (standard) language or a unified culture.

SUMMARY In this autoethnographic essay, I explore my identification with a young Zanzibari woman I call Asha, whose premarital activities and wedding I took part in while doing ethnographic research on Zanzibari Muslim women's weddings and marriages in 2011. When both of our marriages ended abruptly, my relationship with Asha was severed, and I use this loss to examine why I was so invested in it to begin with. [loss, marriage, Swahili, weddings, Zanzibar]

In contemporary North American Muslim congregations involved in the "progressive Muslim movement," prayer practices rework tradition in recognizably Muslim ways while nevertheless differing markedly from those of most mosques. Ethnographic description and participant narratives shed light on the process through which intercorporeality impacts interpretation of Islamic gender norms, outlining the connections among epicene prayer space, bodily proximity, multivocality, and multicorporeality in creating support for feminist and queer religious interpretations and solidarity with marginalized others. Interreligious critiques of such nonconformist approaches have tended to treat nonconformist Muslims as inappropriately concerned with individual liberties or as individual activists seeking media attention. Attention to alterity in context, however, demonstrates that alternative understandings develop not from individual beliefs, practices, or desires but rather through somatic practice within a community of like-minded co-religionists learning new habits through intercorporeality. [progressive Muslims, performativity, congregational prayer, intercorporeality and embodiment, sexual diversity and gender variance] RESUMEN En congregaciones musulmanas norteamericanas contemporáneas envueltas en el "movimiento musulmán progresista", las prácticas de oración retrabajan la tradición en formas musulmanas reconocibles, mientras que difieren marcadamente de aquellas de la mayoría de las mezquitas. Descripciones etnográficas y narrativas participativas arrojan luz sobre el proceso a través del cual la intercorporealidad impacta la interpretación de las normas de género musulmanas, bosquejando las conexiones entre el espacio de oración epiceno, la proximidad de los cuerpos, la multivocalidad, y la multicorporealidad creando apoyo para interpretaciones religiosas feministas y queer, y solidaridad con otros marginados. Críticas interreligiosas de tales aproximaciones no conformistas han tendido a tratar musulmanes no conformistas como inapropiadamente preocupados con libertades individuales o como activistas individuales buscando la atención de los medios. Atención a la alteridad en contexto, sin embargo, demuestra que entendimientos alternativos se desarrollan no de creencias, prácticas o deseos individuales sino más bien a través de la práctica somática dentro de una comunidad de correligionistas de ideas similares aprendiendo nuevos hábitos a través de la intercorporealidad. [musulmanes progresistas, performatividad, oración congregacional, intercorporealidad y corporeizarían, diversidad sexual y varianza de género]

This article analyzes a conversation with two Zanzibari women about sex between humans and spirits. This research demonstrates how they navigate gender-based restrictions on discourse to discuss sex and desire, violating a hegemonic language ideology that would silence them. Whereas previous work has focused on how Swahili women subvert gendered speech prohibitions by nonverbally taking up discourse produced by others, this article examines how they produce resistant discourse themselves. The analysis is contextualized in terms of three social elements that shape women’s talk about (supernatural) sex: (1) a discursive culture that emphasizes equivocal interpersonal communication; (2) a language ideology informed by an Islamic emphasis on discretion; and (3) the extension of cultural transgressions allowed during spirit possession to transgressions during talk about spirit possession and other occult phenomena.