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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