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Comics: Pen Power
A Graphic Novelist's Personal Portrait
Tackles Fear, Anger and History
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
March 29, 2008
In Toufic El Rassi's debut graphic novel, "Arab in America," he explains what daily life has been for someone born in Lebanon and raised in the U.S. "Since it was clear that the average American couldn't distinguish Arabs & Muslims from other nationalities & faiths I soon felt both fear & anger," he writes.
Mr. El Rassi says his book, published by Last Gasp, an independent publisher based in San Francisco, is primarily autobiographical, although he has made some changes. He intersperses his story with historical events such as the 9/11 terror attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in order to "tell my story while presenting history and politics from an Arab point of view.
The 30-year-old author decided upon the format of a graphic novel because he has always loved to draw. "So much has been written about the Middle East, but I wanted to do it in a way that nobody has done before," he says. Mr. El Rassi is an adjunct instructor at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Ill., where he teaches history and political science.
Mr. El Rassi, who was born in Beirut and immigrated to the Chicago area with his family in 1979, got the idea for the book while attending a fund-raiser at a local mosque. A woman got up and said her children were ashamed of who they were. They didn't want to tell anyone they were Arabs, and they refused to speak Arabic at home.
"While she spoke, it seemed like my life experience came flooding back into my brain," he says. "Every time I met somebody who was noticeably Arab, they told me they'd had a similar experience. So I decided to make this book for them."
The Guardian reviews Arab in America:
http://books. guardian. co. uk/review/story/0,,2267344,00. html
On the defensive
Craig Taylor
Saturday March 22, 2008
The Guardian
Arab in America: A True Story of Growing Up in America by
Toufic El Rassi (Last Gasp, £9.99)
Those looking for lush artwork and nuance will do well to skip El Rassi's autobiographical tour of his troubled American existence, but Arab in America is more complex and rewarding upon closer examination. The scrawled black and white drawings track a journey from El Rassi's birth in Beirut to his struggles with and in America. He understands he's different after a childhood production of The Wizard of Oz places his face among his classmates - a "dark splotch" beside the white. From there he examines his family and his role in this eternal war against terror that seems to have shuffled him into the opposing camp. Why do they have to be referred to as "our troops", anyway, he asks. Not only does El Rassi feel the sting of racial slurs, but he often receives the wrong ones altogether: "Americans don't even know who they're supposed to hate.
He explores the different degrees of Muslim activism through the reactions of the friends around him. Throughout El Rassi remains an inert figure, held in by the constraints of his personality and his culture. The struggle to find an identity is kickstarted finally by Rage Against the Machine and a reading list of revolutionaries. Even then El Rassi questions the best intentions of the liberals around him. He decides to become a US citizen to save himself from a possible one-way ticket out. The work is most powerful when El Rassi is recounting his own failures, his missed opportunities and outrages, petty or otherwise. The post-9/11 context he's gathered to illustrate his thesis seems to be snipped from newspapers. At its best, his personal history is enough to illustrate a life lived constantly on the defensive.
About the book:
Arab in America:
A True Story of Growing Up in America
Toufic El Rassi / Last Gasp
Trade Paper / New / Graphic Novels
In this autobiography-meets-graphic novel, Beirut-born lecturer and writer Toufic El Rassi illustrates the daily prejudice and discrimination experienced by Muslims and Arabs in modern American society. Drawing from his personal history, Toufic shows how hard it is to maintain an Arab Identity in a country saturated with anti-Arab propaganda, examining the role of media and pop culture against the backdrop of 9/11, two Gulf Wars, and U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Arab in America is a must read for those infuriated with the absurdity and blatant prejudice of contemporary American foreign policy!
Published by Last Gasp Books www.lastgasp.com
Available at your local bookstore and online:
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