How Does It Feel to Be A Problem: Being Young and Arab in America (2008)

How Does It Feel to Be A Problem: Being Young and Arab in America (2008) is a nonfiction text by Brooklyn College English professor and Arab-American Moustafa Bayoumi. The title comes from W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1903 text, The Souls of Black Folk, wherein he directed this question toward the African-American experience. Following the stories of seven young ArabAmericans living in Brooklyn, and including their struggles after the 9/11 attacks, Bayoumi’s book suggests that present-day ArabAmericans absorb the discrimination, social stigma, and paranoid criminalization Du Bois aligned with AfricanAmericans. 

In the Preface, Bayoumi explains that he focused on the experiences of young Arab-Americans living in Brooklyn, chiefly because the New York borough has “the largest Arab-American population in the nation” (8). He also chose Brooklyn for its close proximity to Ground Zero, examining the stories of young people who “ha[d] no adult experience of the world prior to September 11” (7). Furthermore, he explains how his research process—conversing with people at mosques, schools, local stores, and hookah cafes—allowed him to observe “how the pressures of domestic life and foreign policy push on individual lives,” charting the intersections of “race, religion, and civil rights” (11) in a diverse yet tightly-knit community.

How Does It Feel to Be A Problem follows the narratives of Rasha, Sami, Yasmin, Akram, Lina, Omar, and Rami. Rasha’s chapter details her Syrian family’s harrowing experience being incarcerated after a post-9/11 FBI home raid in February 2002. Held for three months in a New Jersey prison, she finds herself the subject of racist remarks and treatment from her jailers. Though her family is released with the help of a lawyer, the incident leaves a permanent mark on Rasha’s consciousness. Amnesty International reports that thousands of Arab-American immigrant families such as Rasha’s experienced similar, arbitrary detention (42).

The second chapter follows Sami, a Manhattan-raised, Christian man who joins the Marine Corps years before 9/11. He continues to serve in the military during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, working as a translator. When he returns to the US, Sami finds himself in the unusual position of being marginalized by society in general, because he is Arab-American, and by the Arab community, for his role in the US-Arab conflict. Of the seven characters considered by Bayoumi, he is the only Arab-Christian.

Chapter 3 narrates the story of a brave high school student named Yasmin who fights for a position in her school’s student government. Though the school attempts to prevent Yasmin from observing her religion during school dances, she refuses to compromise her principles in the face of discrimination.

Chapter 4 tells the story of Akram, a hard-working college student who also works long hours at his family’s grocery store, Mike’s Food Center. Akram’s parents hope he will be the first family member to gain a college degree from a US institution; however, in response to the constant degradation he experiences because of his ethnicity, Akram considers moving to Dubai. He believes that for young Arabs, Dubai is the new cite of the “American Dream,” citing Langston Hughes’s words: “America’s not America anymore to me” (145). 

The fifth chapter focuses on Lina, an Iraqi-American teenager from a well-educated, wealthy family. Despite her affluent background, Lina struggles both with external discrimination, based on her race, and internal conflict with her family, based on her identification with her African-American neighbors. In her quest for independence, Lina travels between Kuwait, Iraq, and Syria, and across the US By the end of her chapter, she attains her dream of marrying and establishing her own family, noting that she will make a new home in Syria with her children because “[t]here is no Iraq anymore” (185). 

The book’s sixth section details the story of Omar, a young man experiencing discrimination as he attempts to further his career in news media. After a successful internship with the Arab news organization Al-Jazeera, Omar discovers that his experience may have actually decreased his chances of landing a job in cable TV.

The book concludes with Rami, whose father was arbitrarily imprisoned immediately after 9/11 because someone accused him of terrorism. Amidst the chaos of his father’s imprisonment, Rami discovers a center of calm in the practice of Islam. In addition to deepening his own religious practice, he dedicates himself to spreading the word about Islam, delivering educational lectures at schools in Staten Island. Rami is equally dedicated to carving a place for himself in secular America and pursuing a degree in English literature at Brooklyn College (where he is taught by Bayoumi himself).

The prevailing themes of How Does It Feel to Be A Problem include resilience in the face of discrimination, the complex (and often conflicted) existence of young Arab-Americans, and the intersection of diverse immigrant stories in America. The book aptly culminates with a Brooklyn block party, wherein a wide range of people from different ethnic groups interact harmoniously. The author sees this block party as a model for the kind of supportive, non-discriminatory environment America can strive to be.