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How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?: Being Young And Arab In America (2008)

by Moustafa Bayoumi(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1594201765 (ISBN13: 9781594201769)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Penguin Press HC, The

review 1: The chance was given to twenty something Arab American to talk about their personal experience in NYC and Brooklyn after the terrorist attacks of September. but it's not the whole scene. with the rise of Catholic immigration to the country in the 19th century , Irish and Italian American were attacked for their religion. they suffered mob violence and frequent accusation of holding papal loyalties above republican values.. APART FROM THAT, have any scholars paid the same attention for the Violation of Human Rights?. During the WWI, German American were loathed and reviled, and several states banned the teaching of German, convinced that the language itself promoted un-American values. it happens only in Totalitarian societies.
review 2: This was the last book I... more read for a seminar on 20th-and-21st-century Immigrant Writers in the US. While it was certainly well written, I did not like it as much as the others. This is mostly the case because of the subject matter, as I'm simply not that interested in the topic of Arab-Americans. The stories do pack quite a punch, especially the first, which is about a girl who is illegaly imprisoned in the wake of 9/11, but others, such as the one about Yasmin just seemed tedious to me. Yasmin was constantly bitching about different aspects, and I really wanted to quit at that moment. But, alas, I managed to read the rest, and the other stories were definitely better. They manage to convey the aggression and racism Arab-Americans had and have to face in the last few years. Bayoumi concludes that "Arabs are the new niggers". I'd rewrite that: Arabs are just the newest link in a chain of racism. Native Americans, Germans, Jews, Irish, African, Chinese and every other combination of -Americans had to face racism. Let's see which nation'll be the next. 3/5. less

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