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My hometown in relation to the state<\/a>.<\/p>\nGrowing up in the United States myself and many others were afforded privileges that many others across the world are not. For example, I was able to grow up in a stable middle class household in New Jersey and was afforded many opportunities. Compared to regions such as the Levant in the Middle East, my childhood would be an outlier. As a child I was raised in a religious and in a predominantly Italian-American culture which is a difference from the region. In the Levant, a non-religious family is unheard of as countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria 93% or higher of the population is Muslim as of 2018 (Muslim Population, 2023). In the region, Israel has the lowest percentage of its people being Muslim at 18% (Population, 2021). This is incredibly different from my hometown which had a significant Christian population. Furthermore, this culture shaped the majority of people in my hometown, much like I imagine having a large muslim population would.<\/p>\n
Additionally the landscape of my home town is different from many of the areas in the Levant. This is due to the fact that I grew up in a suburban town and not in either a rural or metropolitan\/urban area. In the Levant region alone, upwards of 70% of the population lives in urban areas. The only exception here is Syria where only 56% of the population lives in urban areas (Urban Population, 2018). Being a child in the suburbs was a vital part of my childhood and I could not imagine growing up in any other environment, especially an urban area.<\/p>\n
My hometown in relation to the state<\/a>.<\/p>\n