A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold Through Arab-American Lives (2009) By Alia Malek

I bought this book from a bookstand at the Printers Row Book Fair featuring Arab American writers.  The seller offered about a dozen titles “to begin the process” of educating the general population about the trial and tribulations of life as an Arab immigrant in America.  A Country Called Amreeka was probably not the most readable selection, but it is stuffed with interesting information, such as: two-thirds of the Arabs in the U.S. are not Muslim (they are Lebanese, Iraqi and Syrian Christians); and roughly 70% of the Muslim in the U.S. are not Arab (they are Pakistani’s and Indonesians).  Arab Americans share one important similarity with other hyphenated-Americans, your average Anglo-American is unable to tell them apart, and basically uninterested in doing so.  The book has a very interesting couple of chapters on the Arab community in Dearborn, Michigan and also outlines the difficulties of being in the U.S. in a post-9/11 environment.