Anan Ameri - Daily Life of Arab Americans in the 21st Century

Anan Ameri, PhD, is the founding director of the Arab American National Museum. She holds a PhD in sociology from Wayne State University and was a visiting scholar at Harvard Universitys Center for Middle Eastern Studies in 1996. Dr. Ameri has close to 30 years of experience in working with Arab American communities in the United States. She is the author and editor of several books and articles about Arab Americans, including the Arab American Encyclopedia and Telling Our Story: The Arab American National Museum.

Holly Arida is an educator and writer who specializes in Middle Eastern and Arab American affairs. She developed a new method for teaching about the Middle East and consults for schools and universities on global education strategies. She has authored several articles and co-edited the book Etching Our Own Image: Voices from within the Arab American Art Movement for the Arab American National Museum, where she serves as an advisor. Arida is a graduate of the Center for Modern Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan and teaches at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School.

Randa A. Kayyali is the author of The Arab Americans, which received an award from the Arab American National Museum in the nonfiction book category and was translated into Arabic by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing. She received her MA in sociology/anthropology from the American University in Cairo and is currently pursuing her PhD in cultural studies at George Mason University.

Randa A. Kayyali

Kathleen Marker is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, where her dissertation research focuses on the relationship between identities and the economy. With the support of grants from the National Science Foundation and Kauffman Foundation, she has conducted interviews of Arab American entrepreneurs around the country investigating the role of religion and ethnicity in business networking.

Kathleen Marker

Helen Hatab Samhan is a senior executive with the Arab American Institute, which focuses on Arab American issues in politics, leadership training, and public policy. She lectures and publishes on the immigrant experience of Arabs in the United States, Arab American identity and demographics and political involvement, and Arab American women. Samhan serves on numerous boards and holds an MA in Middle East studies from the American University of Beirut.

Helen Hatab Samhan

Janice J. Terry is a professor emeritus at Eastern Michigan University and a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is coauthor of The Twentieth Century: A Brief Global History and has published widely on various aspects of Arab American and Arab history. She is also the former editor of the Arab Studies Quarterly.

Janice J. Terry

Marvin Wingfield was for many years the director of education and outreach for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). His educational work includes the development of many lesson plans and teachers resources, as well as numerous articles on Arab Americans, anti-Arab discrimination, Arab culture, and Islam. He has an MA in religious studies from the Earlham School of Religion.

Marvin Wingfield

DAILY LIFE OF ARAB AMERICANS IN THE 21 st CENTURY

ANAN AMERI

HOLLY ARIDA

Copyright 2012 by the Arab American National Museum

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Daily life of Arab Americans in the 21st century / Anan Ameri and Holly Arida, editors.

p. cm. (Greenwood Press daily life through history series)

Published under the auspices of the Arab American National Museum.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-313-37714-3 (hardcopy : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-313-37715-0 (ebook) 1. Arab AmericansSocial life and customs21st century. 2. Arab AmericansSocial conditions21st century. 3. United StatesEthnic relationsHistory21st century. I. Ameri, Anan. II. Arida, Holly. III. Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, Mich.)

E184.A65D35 2012

305.8927073dc23 2011048338

ISBN: 978-0-313-37714-3

EISBN: 978-0-313-37715-0

16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5

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This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Bringing this publication to fruition could not have happened without the valuable contributions of a number of people, especially the authors of the various chapters of this book. To each of them we owe a special debt of gratitude for their timely submissions and for the high quality of their work: Marvin Wingfield, Randa Kayyali, Dr. Janice J. Terry, Kathleen Marker, and Helen Samhan.

We would also like to extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Denyse Sabagh, Nadeen Aljijakli, and Noel Saleh for sharing their valuable knowledge and experience about 9/11 and immigration laws for the immigration chapter. Our warm gratitude goes to the artists in the Arab American art movement and the organizations and publications that support them for the art included in the art chapter.

Our deepest appreciation and heartfelt gratitude goes out to the Arab American National Museum staff members who helped with this project: Janice Freij for her contribution to the timeline and glossary; Celia Shallal for helping with research and for her technical assistance; Fay Saad for her help in proofreading and the many logistics associated with putting an edited book together; Arleen Wood and Kristin Lalonde at the Museum Library and Resource Center for their support in finding the resources necessary for this publication; Suzy Mazloum and Kim Silarski for their help in securing images for the publication; and Lama Mansour for sharing her expertise on the Arab American art community. We thank Sonya Kassis for sharing with us her personal experience of her familys celebration of Easter and Nadia Bazzy for her story about being an Arab American student today. Special thanks go to our copy editor Cindy Bohn for her outstanding work.