Bayoumi's work, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America, traces the experiences of seven young Arab-Americans navigating life in a post–September 11 environment, where complicated public perceptions of the attacks gave birth to new brands of stereotypes, fueling widespread discrimination. It is the story of how young Arab and Muslim Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy. His title is a reference to the W.E.B. Du Bois' 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk. How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America was awarded a 2008 American Book Award and the 2009 Arab American Book Award for Non-Fiction.
In This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (NYU Press, 2015), Bayoumi reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans, highlighting the profound effect this surveillance has had on how they live their lives. The essays expose how contemporary politics, movies, novels, media experts and more have together produced a culture of fear and suspicion that not only willfully forgets the Muslim-American past, but also threatens all of our civil liberties in the present.[9] This Muslim American Life was awarded the 2016 Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Arab American Book Award.
Ratshit Talib