How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? - The Experience of Young Arabs in America | Navigating Identity, Culture & Society" (Note: This book title already appears to be in English. I've maintained the original poetic phrasing while adding keywords like "experience," "identity," "culture," and "society" for SEO. The added section highlights the book's themes of cultural navigation and social challenges faced by young Arab Americans.)
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Product Description
“Bayoumi offers a revealing portrait of life for people who are often scrutinized but seldom heard from.” —Booklist (starred review) “Wholly intelligent and sensitively-drawn, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? is an important investigation into the hearts and minds of young Arab-Americans. This significant and eminently readable work breaks through preconceptions and delivers a fresh take on a unique and vital community. Moustafa Bayoumi's voice is refreshingly frank, personable, and true.” —Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Origin, Crescent, and The Language of Baklava An eye-opening look at how young Arab- and Muslim-Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy Just over a century ago , W.E.B. Du Bois posed a probing question in his classic The Souls of Black Folk: How does it feel to be a problem? Now, Moustafa Bayoumi asks the same about America's new "problem"-Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, home to the largest Arab-American population in the United States. He moves beyond stereotypes and clichés to reveal their often unseen struggles, from being subjected to government surveillance to the indignities of workplace discrimination. Through it all, these young men and women persevere through triumphs and setbacks as they help weave the tapestry of a new society that is, at its heart, purely American.
Customer Reviews
seven twenty-somethings: all arab american, all brooklynites, each one struggling it out in a post 9-11 world. there is so much heart to these stories...so much gumption and grace. how to live from a place of dignity, trust, when you are under constant surveillance? under suspicion? subjected to discrimination at work, school, while riding the bus up brooklyn's fifth avenue, to get taco bell for your three sisters?stories connect us to each other, writes dr. bayoumi. "in the ways that polemics and polls cannot, they reveal our conflicts within ourselves and our vulnerabilities to each other."in these stories we learn of a young arab american marine who enlists, and is deployed to iraq where he eventually begins questioning the war & his involvement in it. "am i out here for somebody's personal gain?" he asks. "none of these people making decisions have anybody there. they're playing with house money. they're playing with the youth of this country."then there's rasha, a young woman who is detained post 9-11, with her entire family and without reason...there's yasmin a force, a firebrand, who takes on the administration of her school, calling them out on their discrimination...there are stories of hurt and betrayal and love here. of humanity."how does it feel to be a problem?" w.e.b. dubois asked over a century ago. and now, dr. bayoumi asks anew, asks at a time when muslim communities around the nation continue to "feel under the blunt hammer of suspicion."i loved this book, an essential, powerful read. five stars are not enough.
