Arab in America by Toufic El RassiPublisher: Last Gasp, 2007
Softcover 118 pages
I can't remember where I heard about this book, or why it was on my holds list at the library, but I read it anyway because it seemed liked an interesting book, and it's a graphic novel so I knew it would only take me an hour to finish. First thing I want to say is that the back cover is a tad misleading. In bold letters it states: "HILARIOUS, ENRAGING, AND POIGNANTLY RELEVANT!" This book really isn't that funny, the author's self effacing humor brought the occasional sad smile to my lips, but nothing is "laugh out loud" funny about human suffering. Also, that wasn't a typo that I made, the book said "enraging". It took me a few times of reading the phrase before I noticed that it didn't say "engaging". So the book is meant to inspire wrath?
This book was touted as"a must-read for those infuriated with the absurdity and blatant prejudice of contemporary American foreign policy". Yes, if you already think like him, read this book and have someone else agree with you. This book offers nothing new to the discussion, nothing that I would consider "poignant" and only works as a human interest drama. Reading this book to gain insight into the Arab perspective on the US involvement in the Middle East will leave you disappointed. What you can get out of this misspelled jumble is the life of a young man, struggling to define himself and caught essentially between two worlds, the one that he grew up in and the one of his heritage.
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