"You brought light": Saudi women ulfa (الألفة) literacies through language, affect, and artifacts

Youmna Deiri ¹ ^*

¹ Texas A&M International University, UNITED STATES
^* Corresponding Author

https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/17659

Published in Volume 13 Issue 2: 29 Dec 2025

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Abstract

This bi/multilingual intimate ethnography examines the educational experiences of four transnational Saudi women living in the United States, tracing how Ulfa (الألفة) as theorized through Tectonic Ulfa shapes their navigation of multilingual, racialized, and geopolitically charged academic spaces. The methodology of this study is grounded in a framework that conceptualizes Ulfa as cyclical entanglements of structural linguistic violence, collective resistance, and healing. The study draws on qualitative ethnographic conversations, fieldnotes, and artifacts, among other modalities, with participants. Findings show that English-only environments produced intimate educational harms, including epistemic erasure, linguistic coercion, and the exhaustion of perpetual linguistic labor. Yet the women created tectonic ulfa by refusing colonial linguistic hierarchies through critical analysis of language and colonialism, collective knowledge-making, humor, sensory home-making practices (bakhour, coffee, handwritten Arabic signs), and creative self-authorship. These practices formed pedagogical spaces where vulnerability, brilliance, and belonging could coexist despite rupture and surveillance. For example, artifacts such as square Kufic jewelry illustrate how language became both subtle defiance and intimate self-narration in monitored environments. The study advances “Tectonic” Ulfa as a theoretical and methodological contribution to postcolonial education research, demonstrating that the learning and survival of Saudi women educators are not sustained by violent educational institutions but through relational, affective, and multilingual practices that hold resistance, and hope together.

Figure 1. Tectonic Ulfa model

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APA 7th edition

In-text citation: (Deiri, 2025)
Reference: Deiri, Y. (2025). "You brought light": Saudi women ulfa (الألفة) literacies through language, affect, and artifacts. Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society, 13(2), Article 6. https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/17659

AMA 10th edition

In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Deiri Y. "You brought light": Saudi women ulfa (الألفة) literacies through language, affect, and artifacts. Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society. 2025;13(2), 6. https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/17659

Chicago

In-text citation: (Deiri, 2025)
Reference: Deiri, Youmna. ""You brought light": Saudi women ulfa (الألفة) literacies through language, affect, and artifacts". Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society 2025 13 no. 2 (2025): 6. https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/17659

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MLA

In-text citation: (Deiri, 2025)
Reference: Deiri, Youmna ""You brought light": Saudi women ulfa (الألفة) literacies through language, affect, and artifacts". Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society, vol. 13, no. 2, 2025, 6. https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/17659

Vancouver

In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Deiri Y. "You brought light": Saudi women ulfa (الألفة) literacies through language, affect, and artifacts. Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society. 2025;13(2):6. https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/17659

Keywords

Ulfa (الأُلفة), framework, al-Ulfa/intimate literacies, multilingual literacies, transnational Saudi women, Arabic language practices

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