Here is the blurb I got in Wall Street Journal last weekend :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120673988076572759.html?mod=2_1167_1
BOOKS
Picks
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."
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