Professor Moustafa Bayoumi Earns 2008 ABA Accolade

Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, was awarded the American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation for his recent title, How Does it Feel to Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America.

In his new book, Bayoumi responds to a question originally posed by W.E.B. Du Bois in the The Souls of Black Folk by probing more than twenty young Arab and Muslim Americans from the Arab American community in Brooklyn about what it feels like to be perceived as a “problem” for the American society in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

These conversations immerse the reader in the real-life stories that connect us to each individual’s quest for meaning as well as their oft-unseen entanglements with society and its authorities, including government surveillance and detentions, workplace discrimination, warfare in their countries of origin, threats of vigilante violence, the infiltration of spies and informants into their midst, and the disappearance of friends or family. In the end, the book emerges as an unforgettable American story of race, religion, and civil rights, but also as part of our era’s fight for equality and our society’s necessary commitment to compassion.

The Zürich-born Bayoumi completed his Ph.D. in English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is co-editor of The Edward Said Reader and has published academic essays in Transition, Interventions, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Amerasia, Arab Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Asian American Studies, and other places. His writings have also appeared in The Nation, The London Review of Books, and The Village Voice. His essay “Disco Inferno,” originally published in The Nation, was included in the collection Best Music Writing 2006. He is currently an editor for Middle East Report.

Created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community, the American Book Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but by other writers who recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. Winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. The Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit educational and service organization dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature.