A mainstream film first introduced this Muslim teen to free legal aid.

Evidence

After a few weeks, her mother took the girls to the movies. It was a Saturday afternoon. The theater is next to the neighborhood mosque, so the conservatively dressed Muslims and belly-button-showing moviegoers frequently find themselves congregating on the same sidewalk after their respective communal events. Yasmin and her family checked out the movie posters advertising current attractions, and since everyone liked the young Dakota Fanning, they decided on I Am Sam. A few minutes later, the screen lit up with Sean Penn acting the part of Sam, a mentally challenged father whose child is taken away from him, and Yasmin felt a twinge of recognition. Here was Sam, battling a system that steamrolled right over him, needing legal help. In the movie he visits the office of Rita Harrison, a high-octane attorney played by Michelle Pfeiffer, only to be pushed out of Harrison’s office. But he goes back, and Harrison is embarrassed in front of her colleagues by Sam’s presence. In an effort to salvage a modicum of her humanity, Harrison sputters out an offer of pro bono legal representation. “My lawyer for free!” Sam screams, jumping around her office after she explains to him what “pro bono” means. In all her research, Yasmin had never hitched on to the term “pro bono,” and she immediately raised an eyebrow in the dark. Pro bono? she thought. That sounds like something I need to know. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 425

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s ongoing theme of Muslims navigating hostile bureaucratic-secular systems, and Yasmin inheriting her mother’s precariat struggle against school discipline.
• SEED: An essay angle: how mass-market fiction and film become unrecognized vectors for legal and civic literacy among immigrant and marginalized teens — what informal channels actually teach people their rights.