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Sami
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism, Discrimination, and Foreign Policy
Arab American Identities
Faith, Tradition, and Islam
Growing Up and Self-Discovery
Justice, Activism, and the Future of American Democracy
Summary
Analysis
One day, heading to Taco Bell on the bus to pick up food for her sisters, Yasmin watches a white couple harass a fellow hijab-wearing Muslim woman, suggesting that she has a bomb under her blanket. It is just a baby, Yasmin insists, as the white couple wonders aloud whether the woman might be a terrorist. The couple forces the driver to check—it is a baby, indeed—and then returns to reading the newspaper as though nothing has happened. Yasmin is angry, certain that the targeted woman must “feel humiliated and upset.” When she gets off the bus, she writes down its license plate number and thinks about calling 911, reporting that the white woman has a bomb in her purse, “just to make a point, to make them feel the same way—singled out, powerless, discriminated against, a source of irrational fear.”
Yasmin witnesses an extraordinary scene of racial profiling that all involved—except the victim—treat like an inconsequential routine. The woman’s hijab marks her as a threat, representing the “enemy.” In reality, she is the opposite of a heartless terrorist: a protective mother. Undoubtedly, Yasmin also feels “humiliated and upset” to live in a country where treating someone this way can be routine; she sees how Du Bois’s “veil” separates the white couple from the Arab woman whom they humiliate without regarding as a full human being.
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Yasmin, like many hijab-wearing women in the United States, is fearless and formidable, “far from the stereotype of the submissive and retreating female.” Western people who accept the notion that the hijab represents repression and silence often do not realize that, precisely because they must counter this stereotype, hijabi women are often courageous and vocal. Yasmin, for one, had to endure a lengthy battle with her school’s administration in order to express her religious beliefs. She grew up wearing the hijab and attending Muslim private girls’ schools; she is devoutly religious. Yasmin’s father is an Egyptian Muslim while her mother is a Filipina Catholic who converted to Islam. After finishing at her private school, Yasmin goes to public junior-high and high schools in Brooklyn.
The hijab is itself a symbol for the misinterpretations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States: for the former, it is a form of personal expression and the ability to wear it in public is a cause for pride in American multiculturalism; for the latter, it symbolizes the suppression, not expression, of women’s voices and Islam’s ostensible desire to destroy the American way of life. Of Bayoumi’s subjects so far, Yasmin is the only one who sees religion as central to her identity and daily life, and her ethnic identities tell an unusual story contrary to stereotypes of traditional Muslims as only marrying within their immigrant communities.
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At Fort Hamilton High School in the wealthy, quiet, tree-lined area of the same name in Bay Ridge, Yasmin stumbles into student government, filling out the onerous application and gathering the necessary 100 signatures to run for secretary. On the day of the speeches, Yasmin is sure she will lose—her opponents are a popular Greek boy and a scantily-clad Russian girl—but Arab and Muslim students start coming up to her afterward to express their pride, and she wins in a landslide. She soon begins attending Executive Board meetings and virtually moves into the school’s Leadership classroom.
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One day, two secular Albanian Muslim girls ask her about the year’s first dance—Yasmin is not planning to go, but the other girls think this might be a problem. She explains to the student affairs coordinator that her religious beliefs preclude her from going to the dance, but he says that her position in student government requires her to go. Their argument reaches a standstill; the administrator calls Yasmin’s father, who consults a sheikh (a Muslim community leader). The sheikh agrees that Yasmin cannot go—she cannot even sit in another room during the event, as the school proposes (this would be like sitting in a house where someone else is using drugs—she would also be arrested for “being a part of that house”).
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The Executive Board meets without Yasmin and agrees with the student affairs coordinator that she has to go to the dance or else resign. The coordinator meets with her father and then with Yasmin, who protests and cites the Federal Equal Access Act. But the coordinator does not budge. During his meeting with Yasmin’s father, he asks, “how long do you think you can control your daughter?” Yasmin and her father are hurt; she resigns, but includes an explanation that she is “giving up my position to defend what I believe in.” She finds a copy of the minutes from the Executive Board meeting about her: everyone else in the student government voted against her. The Russian girl takes over her job.
At home, in her father’s tiny office, Yasmin begins printing and organizing files about anti-discrimination laws and the school’s “Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities.” After months of obsessive research and conversation with her friends, she e-mails a trustee of the New York City Board of Education and begins a dialogue about investigating her case—but she is unwilling to name her school, so the investigation cannot happen. She talks to the school superintendent, but also gets nowhere. She begins reading law books at the Brooklyn Public Library and talks to the student affairs coordinator whenever she comes up with a new argument—he always listens patiently but ultimately refutes her ideas. Meanwhile, the student government is rescheduling events to accommodate the Jewish holidays, and “steam pour[s] out of Yasmin’s ears at the double standard.”
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Yasmin is also worried about the statute of limitations—she only has a year to file a lawsuit—so she decides to run for student government again, this time for the office of vice president. This year, the application includes a new line: “If elected, I agree to attend all Student Organization sponsored events.” She does something she learned from a law textbook: she crosses out the clause and writes her own objections on a separate sheet, explaining that she would “attend the events within the guidelines of my beliefs.” The principal calls her in for a meeting and insists that Yasmin’s father, not the school, is to blame and has the power to choose whether she would resign or serve.
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Yasmin decides to contact the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), but the school ignores CAIR’s letters. A Pakistani Muslim girl wins the vice president position and stays in the basement during the dances—she does not understand why Yasmin cannot do the same. Yasmin sends a hand-written plea for help to the CAIR. She believes that she is breaking “a racial barrier” and “mak[ing] a difference in the world” as a Muslim, even though her school rejects and ignores her; she still feels deeply hurt by America’s prejudice against Muslims.
The next school year starts in September of 2001. On the morning of the 9/11 attacks, the school falls into chaos but Yasmin goes to the Leadership room and has an understanding, productive conversation with the members of student government: “if Muslims did this […] then they didn’t do it because of Islam.” Worried, Yasmin’s parents keep her home from school for a few days.
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Yasmin continues corresponding with CAIR and arguing her case with the student affairs coordinator; she also convinces her sister Mariam to run for freshman representative and add on the application that she will attend events “as long as it doesn’t conflict with our religious beliefs.” Mariam gets a letter from the Student Organization rejecting her addition to the application. Yasmin’s father threatens to sue the school, but he and Yasmin’s mother also insist that Yasmin is wasting too much time on legal research. Mariam, too, quickly gives up, but Yasmin decides to run for president the next year. CAIR contacts the school and then sets up a meeting with Yasmin and her father.
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CAIR’s attorney advises Yasmin to make notes of anything anyone mentions that pertains to her situation. They might have a case, he says, but it will cost thousands of dollars to bring to trial, and Yasmin’s father cannot afford this price tag. Yasmin notes when the student affairs coordinator lets Greek students out of a bodybuilding event because of a religious conflict and starts thinking about how to raise $20,000, calling lawyers in her spare time.
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Yasmin goes with her family to watch the movie I Am Sam, in which a developmentally disabled man gets pro bono representation (a free lawyer, for the sake of the “public good”) in a custody battle for his child, and she realizes she can do the same. She soon discovers the organization Advocates for Children, which she immediately contacts. One of their attorneys, Jimmy Yan, enthusiastically takes up her case pro bono.
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During a phone call with Bayoumi, Jimmy Yan explains that racism in education often impacts “the most vulnerable members in our public schools” and notes Yasmin’s remarkable zeal in researching her case. After taking up her case, Yan first confirms with other attorneys at Advocates for Children that the guarantee of the free exercise of religion in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as legal precedent, should support Yasmin’s claims—especially since the school has changed the requirements for student government to specifically exclude Yasmin. Because the school makes exceptions for Greek and Jewish students but not for Yasmin, its “policy is neither neutral nor generally applicable.” He calls the school and considers filing a formal discrimination complaint—but the school quickly reworks its requirements to run for student government. Yasmin is elated.
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That spring, Yasmin runs for president, noticing that the school will now allow members of student government to “provide a reasonable justification” in case they cannot fulfill some of their duties. She collects 500 signatures instead of 100, just to be sure, and runs against “Andrew, a very popular Greek boy,” who makes his campaign entirely about her inability to attend events. Her speech, meanwhile, is about students’ rights. After two vote counts, the race is still too close to call, and the coordinator of student affairs tells her there would be one more count, although she has the right to ask for a public recount afterwards. She confirms her intention to ask for one, but later that day the coordinator calls her at home and explains that she has won the election by seven votes.
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Yasmin is a well-respected and successful class president; the coordinator of student affairs even writes her a college recommendation, and they are still friends many years later. She finishes college in three years and, at the time of this book’s publication, is in a master’s program. Although Yasmin’s father always wanted her to be a doctor, she decides to go to law school.
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