Customer Reviews

A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Malek's stories on Arabs living in America are beautifully written tales of culture, religion, and identity. Malek frames her stories within the context of integration and social cohesion, interspersing bits of history while poignantly articulating characteristics of the real-life Arab-Americans she interviewed. A must-read for anyone interested in the personal stories of Arab immigrants and Arab American families.

This is a well-written book about 1st and 2nd generation Arab immigrants from various parts of the Middle East and religious groups, trying to make the American dream their own. I liked the style of the book with each chapter beginning with a factual event or U.S. policy that influenced the immigration from the Middle East followed by a story of a real character and seeing it through his or her perspective.

I don't think the author's presentation of the various characters was lopsided, nor was she heavy handed about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I think the stories read here are the first of many more to come. How many stories have we already read about other immigrant groups?

It was easy to read, and I am really impressed that this is the author's first book! I am looking forward to reading her next one!

This book tells the stories of various Arab Americans and their experiences in America over the past fifty years. Some have immigrated, some were born in the U.S., some are Christian and some are Muslim. Each of them has a story to tell about what it's like to be a part of a society that doesn't necessarily consider them as full members. Many of them struggle with the idea that the Middle East, their land of ancestry, is portrayed as the enemy of the United States. Throughout this book we see that nothing could be further from the truth; that in their hopes and dreams they are typically American.

One of the most interesting chapters is 'Courted' which chronicles the actions of two women, each a political consultant, one of whom is trying to get Al Gore elected and the other working to get George Bush elected during the 2000 presidential campaign. Both women believe that their candidate can help Arab-Americans be treated as a part of society as opposed to the perception of them as foreigners. Their efforts add depth to what is by now the familiar story of the 2000 election. It also made me wonder how the Bush supporter views what has happened in the subsequent years.

All said I highly recommend this book and am glad that I learned about the lives of Arab Americans and both their common and unique struggles in this country.

After living for eight years in America and meeting thousands of Arab Americans across the continent, my desire to better understand the history and ethos of Arab Americans as well as the sort of influences that impact their sense of community and identity multiplied tenfold.

Not content with my own observations and impressions, I started looking through the literature for works that recorded and presented the communal history of Arab Americans. I discovered that the corpus was small and unsatisfying. I found Gregory Orfalea's book "Arab Americans: A History" to be one of the richest and most rewarding. Yet, instead of quenching my thirst to understand Arab Americans it made me keener than ever before on studying the socio-anthropology of this community.

Randa Kayyali's "The Arab Americans" was another notable book that I found to offer a great perspective on who the Arab Americans are and why did they come to America. However, I think this book is most valuable to non-Arab Americans who are looking for a better understanding of this integral part of the modern-day American national fabric.


In her book, Alia Malek approaches the story of the Arab American community through the modern history of America spanning nearly half a century. In a very clever and entertaining narrative she intertwines almost every major event in the annals of the Arab American history as influenced by the Middle East conflict with a personal story of an Arab American. The result is a breathtaking sweep of vignettes that illuminate and put in perspective the communal history and culture of Arab Americans. These are stories of victories, failures, sorrows, successes, personal growth, alienation, pride and even personal tragedies, all taken from first hand sources and put in a social and political context that offered me a great understanding and empathy with this community.

Alia has a very colourful style that dramatizes every story and make it worth reading for its pure short-story qualities. Yet, these poignantly told stories are astutely selected so that the sum of their parts, their gestalt, offers a broad mosaic of the successes and tribulations of this community.

This is a brilliantly crafted and captivating mosaic of Arab Americans. Each segment provides an intimate portrait of the human experience at a time when an event of historical significance in Arab history meets one of personal significance in an Arab's history. Every individual, irrespective of race can relate to some aspect of the raw human emotion captured in this collection. Historically based works such as this often leave the reader bored with dry historical facts or skeptical about the validity of the information because it sounds too much like a work of fiction. While the characters are engrossing, I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well Alia Malek avoided this situation by creating a sense of balance. Whether a history aficionado or a novice, this book is a great read. There are little surprises along the way that draw gasps, smiles, and even a tear, but most importantly you finish the book feeling like you have learned something. Whether it's a historical or personal, that makes it a book worth reading. Finally, while the book is chronologically structured, weaving each portrait together through that historical progression, each segment reads like an independent novel. It's good to know that you can skip around or come back to a chapter without having to feel like you're missing anything by doing so. Love it!

In 'A Country Called Amreeka' the author, Alia Malek's, seamlessly weaves personal stories with historical fact. Each chapter stands alone, reading like a short story. Yet together they flow into one another skillfully as they recount critical turning points in American history through the eyes of Arab Americans.

'A Country Called Amreeka' is not only timely but necessary. It humanizes Arab Americans while at the same time rendering this formerly invisible minority, visible. It is well written, funny, political, poignant and touching. I highly recommend it.

There are several touchstones and reference points to the Arab-American experience, and Alia Malek does a beautiful job of filtering so many of them through the shifting prism of law. Through the changes to the Immigration Act that brought scores more Arabs to America in the 1960's, to the foreign policy decisions that had often destabilizing effects on Arab countries, to the national security regime that slowly came into place in the 80's and 90's, the protagonists in these stories struggle to make themselves at home in a strange, unwieldy, and often contradictory land that seems at once to welcome them with open arms and hold them under enhanced scrutiny. These are stories about alienation, isolation, and even tragedy and violence. But they are also stories of transcendence, of cross-cultural engagement, and of good old fashioned American sticktoitiveness. I cannot think of a better introduction to the unique narrative of the Arab-American experience for the uninitiated reader than this.

A fairly interesting historical and personal account of an ethnic subgroup (Arab-Americans) about which probably is little is known. The author gives a running account of many grievances and accounts of prejudice and bias without resorting to accusations or slurs against other ethnicities.

I wish I could join the praise for this title, but I found it unreadable. The prose is, at best, earnest; at worst, it's something the editor should be punished for. To say of a group of boys in a car that they "careened no faster than 25 miles an hour" (p. 54) is so unidiomatic that it's barely English. Chronologies jump around, and the history that is supposed to help with background and perspective is generally just presented as a timeline, utterly without meaning--there is simply no "so what?" anywhere. If you are going to have someone present the "American" argument that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East (76), then there ought to be some rejoinder from the Arab or Arab-American point of view.

Sorry. There's got to be a better book on the Arab-American experience out there somewhere, waiting to be written.