How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“As Moustafa Bayoumi argues in his provocative investigation, young Arab-Americans are still struggling to define their identities in a hostile environment and to cope with the governments distrust…despite what they have suffered and continue to endure, Bayoumi and his interview subjects still hope that America is a place where they can live in peace—and find justice, fairness, and freedom.”
—Francine Prose, O Magazine

“In How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Bayoumi…gives twenty-something Arab-Americans the chance to talk about their victories and defeats.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“These are great stories about people who might be your neighbors, and Bayoumi delivers them with urgency, compassion, wryness and hints of poetry. You may walk away from the book with a much greater understanding of Arab-American life, but you'll feel that's simply because you've hung out with Bayoumi and friends, snarfing down Dunkin' Donuts or puffing on hookahs, talking about vital issues.”
—Salon.com

“Bayoumi's book fascinates.”
—Deborah Douglas, Chicago Sun-Times

“Moustafa Bayoumi's How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? has an intimate feel, as the author listens closely to the dreams and realities of seven young Arabs living in post-9/11 America.”
—Dallas Morning News

“an indispensable guide…a well-written book on a subject that is often overlooked or treated as a side note to bigger problems, like the occupation of Iraq, Israeli aggression and civil liberties.”
—The Arab American News

“Bayoumi succeeds in presenting the reader with more than just a glimpse into these lives. One is right there with Rasha, a Palestinian-American teenager, who was detained along with the rest of her family without reason following 9/11. This first story is the most chilling as one can sense the frustration and dread emanating from Rasha’s story. I have heard about things like this happening but to actually read about 19-year-old Rasha and what she and her entire family had to endure is something else. Bayoumi’s decision to talk to Arabs from Brooklyn was a wise one as these stories are reflections from a group of people that not only have bared the brunt of discrimination, but call New York City their home and therefore, 9/11 affected them as it did most New Yorkers. By providing a book accessible to the masses, Bayoumi gives the Arab problem a very human face that other Americans can empathize with.”
—MediaandIslam.com

“Bayoumi offers a revealing portrait of life for people who are often scrutinized but seldom heard from.”
—Booklist(starred review)

“In many ways, [Bayoumi’s] absorbing and affectionate book is a quintessentially American picture of 21st century citizens ‘absorbing and refracting all the ethnicities and histories surrounding [them].’ However, the testimonies from these young adults—summary seizures from their homes, harassment from strangers, being fired for having an Arab or Muslim name—have a weight and a sorrow that is ‘often invisible to the general public.’”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The book’s title derives from a question posed by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, and given the burgeoning of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiments since 9/11, the author’s appropriation of it seems apt. [Bayoumi] poignantly portrays young people coming of age at a time when “informants and spies are regular topics of conversation…friendships are tested, trust disappears.””
—Kirkus Reviews

"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

“In relating the gripping personal stories of seven young Arab and Muslim Americans from Brooklyn in How Does it Feel to be a Problem, Moustafa Bayoumi reveals the feelings and frustrations of the current era's scapegoats, who can be demonized, profiled, and reviled without fear of sanction. His book shows both the dimensions of this new problem for American society, and the hopeful signs that this problem too can be overcome.”
—Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University and author of The Iron Cage

“Suspenseful storytelling and rich detail make How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? required reading for Americans yearning for knowledge about Islam and their Muslim neighbors in the United States. In a series of fascinating narratives about the horrors and conflicts young Muslim-Americans faced after 9/11, Moustafa Bayoumi has written a work that is passionate, yet measured, humorous, and above all enlightening.”
—Geneive Abdo, author of Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11

"With deft prose, acute insight and extensive reporting, Moustafa Bayoumi has produced truly engrossing portraits of young Muslim Americans about whom we usually hear only empty polemics. With a light touch, he gives voice to people who are referred to often and heard from rarely. The result is a sense of the tentative resistance of a besieged generation, as well as their determination to force America to be true to its promise even if it means confronting prejudice in its practice."
—Gary Younge, author of Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home

Product Description

The story of how young Arab and Muslim Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy

Arab 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.

We meet Sami, an Arab American Christian, who navigates the minefield of associations the public has of Arabs as well as the expectations that Muslim Arab Americans have of him as a marine who fought in the Iraq war. And Rasha, who, along with her parents, sister, and brothers, was detained by the FBI in a New Jersey jail in early 2002. Without explanation, she and her family were released several months later. As drama of all kinds swirls around them, these young men and women strive for the very things the majority of young adults desire: opportunity, marriage, happiness, and the chance to fulfill their potential. But what they have now are lives that are less certain, and more difficult, than they ever could have imagined: workplace discrimination, warfare in their countries of origin, government surveillance, the disappearance of friends or family, threats of vigilante violence, and a host of other problems that thrive in the age of terror.

And yet How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? takes the raw material of their struggle and weaves it into an unforgettable, and very American, story of promise and hope. In prose that is at once blunt and lyrical, Moustafa Bayoumi allows us to see the world as these men and women do, revealing a set of characters and a place that indelibly change the way we see the turbulent past and yet still hopeful future of this country.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (August 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201765
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201769
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #538,213 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, October 12, 2008

By	Ziad Rizk (New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

By taking us inside the lives and minds of young Arab Americans living in Brooklyn, a microcosm of the diverse United States, Bayoumi helps us understand what it means to be young and arab in America today. The short stories covering seven different personalities make the narrative very accessible and the book an easy read. The characters themselves are extremely diverse affording the reader a good coverage of different strata of the Arab American society. From a religious young girl in veil fighting against discrimination, to a marine, a patriotic American fighting in Iraq torn between the Arab and American cultures, to a young grocery store worker inspired by the American dream... each story is unique and heart filled.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, richly told stories, October 2, 2008

By	Yasmin (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

As someone who has worked almost 10 years with young Arab-Americans, I found this to be a very insightful glimpse into the lives of a little understood community. So many people talk about young Arab-Americans - a population often described as a "homegrown threat" or somehow radical - yet how often do we hear what they think, in their own words?

In this book, Bayoumi is granted unique access into the lives of these young people, allowing him to tell each story colorfully and to share their most innermost feelings. The internal conflicts they experience as Arabs and Americans are instructive, as they reflect the greatest political and cultural challenges facing our world today.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars !!!, October 7, 2008

By	Jeany Rhys "Melissa" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

As Americans become more engrossed in our current political stresses, a book like this seems more timely everyday. And in our post-9/11 society, I think it is becoming so important to be aware of how Arab Americans are being used as scapegoats and discriminated against in a way that seems acceptable to many Americans.
I felt that Bayoumi did such a good job of connecting the modes of past prejudices to our contemporary situation, driving home the point that this country is far from over racism. The stories of the people whom the author follows are at points touching, and nothing makes a stronger example than the lives of actual people.