Gregory Orfalea's new and definitive work spans a century and a half of
the life of Arab immigrants and their descendants in the United States.
In The Arab Americans: A History, Orfalea has marshaled over 150
interviews and 25 years of research to tell the story that begins in
1856, when camel driver Hajdi Ali (or Hi Jolly) was hired by Jefferson
Davis to cut a "camel trail" across the Southwest, and continues through
the 2005 arrest of a former Virginia high school valedictorian accused
of plotting with al-Qaeda. Once seen as the "benevolent stranger," as
the author points out, today Arab Americans are "the malevolent
stranger." His book, however, is an assault on such ignorance, both
celebration and warning. The Arab Americans is the culmination of a
life's work, a landmark in the history of what it means to be an
American. It is also the history of a community uniquely repressed in
American scholarship, history, literature, and politics. The Arab
Americans fills a sizable void, and it could not be more timely. With
American troops sprawled across the Arab and Muslim world, Orfalea's
work is like light in a dark tunnel--facts, not stereotypes; people, not
shadows; the vibrant world of a lost American experience come to life.
Orfalea brings to this work an historian's love of meticulous and
telling detail, a poet's ear, and a novelist's sense of story. The
cumulative effect is symphonic and its arrival none too soon.
