Some Arab Americans feel the American dream has reversed into misery

Evidence

“I’ve been rereading Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes,” he told me. “Without being so grand, they”—the McCourt family—“were worse in America than they were in Ireland. We’re becoming like that. I find myself becoming like that, more and more miserable, in a sense,” he said. “I’m tired of it. I love the diversity of this country, I really do, but the whole politics and the whole …” He paused, looking for the right word. He settled on “everything!” He took an exasperated breath before continuing his thought, paraphrasing Langston Hughes this time. “America’s not America anymore to me.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 565

Categorization

• XREF: The Angela’s Ashes parallel — family worse off in America than the old country — inverts the classic immigrant narrative and connects to ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ (Hamid) in this library, where a similar disaffection with America drives the protagonist’s journey.
• SEED: Possible essay angle: ‘reverse migration’ as a distinct genre of the immigrant story — how Frank McCourt’s account of immigrant disillusion becomes a template for contemporary Arab American experience.