About this item

The story of how young Arab and Muslim Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemyArab and Muslim Americans are the new, largely undiscussed "problem" of American society, their lives no better understood than those of African Americans a century ago. Under the cover of the terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the explosion of political violence around the world, a fundamental misunderstanding of the Arab and Muslim American communities has been allowed to fester and even to define the lives of the seven twentysomething men and women whom we meet in this book. Their names are Rami, Sami, Akram, Lina, Yasmin, Omar, and Rasha, and they all live in Brooklyn, New York, which is home to the largest number of Arab Americans in the United States.



About the Author

Moustafa Bayoumi

Moustafa Bayoumi was born in Zürich, Switzerland, grew up in Kingston, Canada, and moved to the United States in 1990 to attend Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in English literature. He is currently a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is also the author of "How Does It Feel To Be a Problem? : Being Young and Arab in America" (Penguin) , which won an American Book Award and the Arab American Book Award for Non-Fiction. (The book has also been translated into Arabic by Arab Scientific Publishers.) His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The National, The Guardian, CNN.com, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and many other places. His essay "Disco Inferno" was included in the collection "Best Music Writing of 2006" (DaCapo) . He is also the co-editor (with Andrew Rubin) of "The Edward Said Reader" (Vintage) and editor of "Midnight on Mavi Marmara: the Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict" (O/R Books and Haymarket Books) . He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Sun-Times, and on CNN, FOX News, Book TV, National Public Radio, and many other media outlets from around the world. Panel discussions on "How Does It Feel To Be a Problem? " have been convened at The Museum of the City of New York, Drexel Law School, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and through PEN American Center, and the book has been chosen as the common reading for incoming freshmen at universities across the country. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.



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