Tuesday, September 9, 2008

How Does it Feel to Be a Problem?

Moustafa Bayoumi read from his new book: How Does it Feel to be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in American (Penguin 2008) at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts sponsored by ArteEast
Yasmin Dwedar joined the reading to share her story. Zohra Saed moderated the panel. Livia Alexander, Executive Director of ArteEast and Michelle Levy, Program Director of EFA Project Space coordinated the event.

The book has received fantastic reviews and its only been out a month! UpSet Press encourages you to read this book and share it with your friends. It is one of the most sensitively written books about the Arab American experience in Brooklyn. We love it so much, we teach it in our classrooms! And our students loved it enough to come out and show their support.

Here are some photos from the event:

Moustafa Bayoumi reading at the beautiful EFA Gallery

Zohra, Moustafa and Yasmin


Yasmin says "Its creepy how exact his description of my high school experience was in the book. It was as if he was sitting on my shoulder witnessing everything I went through at the time."



Post reading schmoozing:
Yasmin speaks to students from Hunter College who came out to support.



Moustafa and the line of admirers.


Notice the Constitutional Law book on the chair! Yasmin is in her first year of Law School, continuing to sharpen the skills she developed in High School fighting for her rights in New York's Public School system.

Livia Alexander, Executive Director/Co-Founder of ArteEast and friends. (Livia is in blue)

Here is a photo of some of the members who make up the stories in Moustafa Bayoumi's book.



(Photos by Zohra Saed)

Moustafa Bayoumi at the Park Slope branch of Barnes & Noble (August 20th Book Release Reading)

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