My Name Is Mohamed: An Immigrant’s Journey of Resilience, Identity, and Faith

TEDx speaker Hammoud (The Return of the Prophet) muses on identity, faith, and purpose in this resonant memoir. Born in Beirut, the author enjoyed an idyllic childhood before the civil war forced his family to flee to Ontario in 1976. There he began to teach himself English with Sears catalogs and started going by Mike, though his attempts to assimilate didn’t protect him from mockery by cruel classmates who called him “camel jockey” and shoved him in hallways. A year of study and travel in Spain during university stoked pride in his identity as he marveled at the science, culture, and art that Arab Muslims brought to Europe, and after graduate school he began using his given name again. But then 9/11 cast “unspoken suspicion” on the Muslim community, automatically assigning “the word terrorist... to brown skin, to Arabic and Muslim names” and attempting to turn “our faith, which had always been our great strength” into “a liability we had to manage.” Despite the damage wrought by racial and religious hate (including attacks on mosques, murders of Muslims, and “systemic racism dressed in security protocols”), the author speaks passionately of reclaiming his name and identity, and of witnessing Western and Middle Eastern Muslim communities endure and rebuild through “the small, steadfast acts of faith that no government, militia, or headline could erase.” Poignant and deeply felt, this will stick with readers. (Oct.)