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Reviews tagging 'Stalking'
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
1 review
zombiezami's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
The portraits in this book were well done. I found myself wishing to know more about several people interviewed in the book, though of course, I can't, since it's unknown to me which people used pseudonyms and which did not. The author bookends the book with helpful historical and political context. However, I don't think he does enough to challenge the anti-Blackness that popped up in some interviews, as well as the settler colonialism that is at the root of the founding of the United States.
Several interviewees said something along the lines of "Arabs and Muslims are the new Blacks" or the new n-words. The author makes a point of demonstrating in the afterword that many of the first enslaved Africans in the Americas were Muslim. However, he doesn't propose solidarity with Black struggles, simply borrowing from Black theorists where those theories apply to Arabs and Muslims. In the afterword, Bayoumi states "What we are currently living through is the slow creep of imperial high-handedness into the rest of American society and facilitated through the growth of racist policies. This fact alone menaces the foundations of American society far beyond what has happened to Arab- and Muslim-American communities," as if the foundation of American society isn't racist policies.
In any case, I enjoyed diving into each person's story, and I hope all of them are living the lives they desire if they are still alive.
Several interviewees said something along the lines of "Arabs and Muslims are the new Blacks" or the new n-words. The author makes a point of demonstrating in the afterword that many of the first enslaved Africans in the Americas were Muslim. However, he doesn't propose solidarity with Black struggles, simply borrowing from Black theorists where those theories apply to Arabs and Muslims. In the afterword, Bayoumi states "What we are currently living through is the slow creep of imperial high-handedness into the rest of American society and facilitated through the growth of racist policies. This fact alone menaces the foundations of American society far beyond what has happened to Arab- and Muslim-American communities," as if the foundation of American society isn't racist policies.
In any case, I enjoyed diving into each person's story, and I hope all of them are living the lives they desire if they are still alive.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Islamophobia, Racism, Xenophobia, Grief, and Confinement
Moderate: War, Death of parent, Death, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Terminal illness, Stalking, Police brutality, Colonisation, and Kidnapping
Minor: Antisemitism, Suicide, Slavery, and Drug use
Incarceration, Deportation
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