Description

"Bayoumi offers a revealing portrait of life for people who are often scrutinized but seldom heard from." --Booklist (starred review)
"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
An eye-opening look at how young Arab- and Muslim-Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy

Just over a century ago, W.E.B. Du Bois posed a probing question in his classic The Souls of Black Folk How does it feel to be a problem? Now, Moustafa Bayoumi asks the same about America's new "problem"-Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, home to the largest Arab-American population in the United States. He moves beyond stereotypes and clichés to reveal their often unseen struggles, from being subjected to government surveillance to the indignities of workplace discrimination. Through it all, these young men and women persevere through triumphs and setbacks as they help weave the tapestry of a new society that is, at its heart, purely American.