Alia Malek: Not So Foreign

After 9/11, most Americans’ view of Arab-Americans changed–often for the worse.  Alia Malek, author of the new book A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories, notes, though, that there were multiple shifts in American perception of Arab-Americans.  “We keep seeing Arabs as only foreign but I wanted to place in the consciousness the idea of the Arab American,” Malek tells us.

Her book weaves together the narratives of Arab-Americans from a football player in Birmingham in 1948 to a Republican (yes, Republican) campaign volunteer in 2000, creating a picture of Arab America that is far outside the stereotype perpetrated during the Bush era.