Toufic El Rassi: Arab in America
Posted by Mike E on March 22, 2008
Toufic’s graphic novel has been published. I just got my own copy (thanks AK) and am planning to savor it page by page. Here is a review that appeared in The Guardian by Craig Taylor, March 22, 2008
Arab in America: A True Story of Growing Up in America by Toufic El Rassi
Those looking for lush artwork and nuance will do well to skip El Rassi’s autobiographical tour of his troubled American existence, but Arab in America is more complex and rewarding upon closer examination. The scrawled black and white drawings track a journey from El Rassi’s birth in Beirut to his struggles with and in America. He understands he’s different after a childhood production of The Wizard of Oz places his face among his classmates – a “dark splotch” beside the white. From there he examines his family and his role in this eternal war against terror that seems to have shuffled him into the opposing camp. Why do they have to be referred to as “our troops”, anyway, he asks. Not only does El Rassi feel the sting of racial slurs, but he often receives the wrong ones altogether: “Americans don’t even know who they’re supposed to hate.”
He explores the different degrees of Muslim activism through the reactions of the friends around him. Throughout El Rassi remains an inert figure, held in by the constraints of his personality and his culture. The struggle to find an identity is kick-started finally by Rage Against the Machine and a reading list of revolutionaries. Even then El Rassi questions the best intentions of the liberals around him. He decides to become a US citizen to save himself from a possible one-way ticket out. The work is most powerful when El Rassi is recounting his own failures, his missed opportunities and outrages, petty or otherwise. The post-9/11 context he’s gathered to illustrate his thesis seems to be snipped from newspapers. At its best, his personal history is enough to illustrate a life lived constantly on the defensive.
