My 2024 New Year’s Resolution Is To Write More About The Arab American Experience

In the dark desert that some people think is the extent of Arab American contributions, I will be the light!

I was born in 1977, but my more lucid memories don’t begin until the early 1980s. I think about that decade more than I should. The music. The movies. How simple things were before the explosion of the internet.

As awesome as growing up in the 1980s was, it wasn’t perfect because growing up as an Arab American in the 1980s was tough. Many times, I turned on the television there was a story about plane hijackings, terrorism or wars that I had nothing to do with but had a profound impact on my fragile, young identity. I felt like an enemy here because I was brainwashed to think that all Arabs are bad, even though I knew members of my family are good people.

I remember after the first Gulf War started in 1990 being scared because the pervasive jingoism, which has flared again many times since then. I demanded that my parents not speak Arabic in public for fear of public reprisals. They still bring that up to me today, and I will always have to deal with that.

At the same time, growing up in Orange County in the early 1990s, I was obsessed with Punk Rock, and, like most teenagers back then, I wanted to be (and was) in a punk…