Arab in America - Softcover

Toufic El Rassi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0867196734 ISBN 13: 9780867196733

Publisher: Last Gasp, 2008

Synopsis

The eye-opening story of the life of an average Arab-American struggling with his identity in an increasingly hostile nation. Using the graphic novel as his medium, Lebanon-born Toufic El Rassi chronicles his experience growing up Arab in America. Keen observations, clever insights and painful honesty make El Rassi's work shine as a critical 21st century memoir.
From childhood through adolescence, and as an adult, El Rassi illustrates the prejudice and discrimination Arabs and Muslims experience in American society. He contends with ignorant teachers, racist neighbors, bullying classmates, and a growing sense of alienation. El Rassi recounts his personal experiences after the 9/11 attacks and during the implementation of new security and immigration laws that followed.
El Rassi gives context to current world events, providing readers with an overview of the modern history of the Middle East, including the Gulf wars. He also examines the roles American films and news media play in creating negative stereotypes of Arab-Americans, showing how difficult it is to have an Arab identity in a society saturated with anti-Arab images and messages.

About this title

About the Author

Toufic El Rassi was born in Beirut in 1978 to an Egyptian mother and Lebanese father. He immigrated to Chicago a year later as his family escaped the civil war in Lebanon. He is a college lecturer in history and political science, a writer, and a graphic novelist and commentator on Middle Eastern affairs. He lives in Chicago.

Reviews

Eloquent despite rather humdrum art and too many misspellings in the copious, hand-lettered text, El Rassi’s autobiographically based plaint couldn’t be more timely. As many as possible need to know what being an Arab in the U.S. is like, and El Rassi meets that need comprehensively. He portrays an existence harried by name-calling, threats of bodily harm, pervasive ignorance about Arabs and the Middle East, and such casual insults as being asked whether he speaks English after having spoken it first. Brought to the U.S. by Lebanese immigrant parents when an infant, he appreciates the injustice of that bigotry more keenly than older immigrants perhaps could, for, raised entirely in the U.S., he was able to presume normalcy until, in eighth grade, his typically Arab dark beard grew in (he draws himself with stubble throughout, starkly differentiating himself from non-Arabs, ultimately to poignant effect). Besides moving us with his personal testimony, El Rassi does a lot of teaching, some of the most devastating of it about the U.S. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Last Gasp
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0867196734
• ISBN 13: 9780867196733
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 117