Books like How does it feel to be a problem? by Moustafa Bayoumi

A true‑story examination of a Laotian immigrant child’s illness and the clash between Hmong cultural beliefs and Western medical practice.

First published in 1992 at the height of the furor over the Rodney King incident, Studs Terkel's Race was an immediate bestseller. In a rare and revealing look at how people in America truly feel about race, Terkel brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among those whose voices appear in Race. In all, nearly one hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: Feelings about affirmative action, gentrification, secret prejudices, and dashed hopes.

Robert Jensen challenges white Americans to confront their own role in racial injustice, blending personal insight with research to expose how white privilege sustains inequality.

John McWhorter argues that the crisis in African‑American communities can only be healed through renewed dedication to achievement and integration, challenging pervasive victimhood and alienation in black culture.

An examination of the psychological and social forces that shape European American identities, exploring how childhood experiences and class dynamics influence perceptions of race, self‑esteem, and belonging in the United States.

Richard Rodriguez’s memoir "Brown" examines the complex role of Hispanic identity in America’s history, exploring race, culture, and psychological dimensions of belonging across generations.

The book recounts the August 7, 1930 lynching in Marion, Indiana, where two African‑American teenagers were murdered after being accused of a crime, and examines how the town's black and white residents responded to the tragedy.

"Over the last few years, Moustafa Bayoumi has been an extra in Sex and the City 2 playing a generic Arab, a terrorist suspect (or at least his namesake 'Mustafa Bayoumi' was) in a detective novel, the subject of a trumped-up controversy because a book he had written was seen by right-wing media as pushing an 'anti-American, pro-Islam' agenda, and was asked by a U.S. citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed. Others have endured far worse fates. Sweeping arrests following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the incarceration and deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, based almost solely on their national origin and immigration status. The NYPD, with help from the CIA, has aggressively spied on Muslims in the New York area as they go about their ordinary lives, from noting where they get their hair cut to eavesdropping on conversations in cafés. In This Muslim American Life, Moustafa Bayoumi reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans, highlighting the profound effect this surveillance has had on how they live their lives. To be a Muslim American today often means to exist in an absurd space between exotic and dangerous, victim and villain, simply because of the assumptions people carry about you. In gripping essays, Bayoumi exposes how contemporary politics, movies, novels, media experts and more have together produced a culture of fear and suspicion that not only willfully forgets the Muslim-American past, but also threatens all of our civil liberties in the present"--From publisher's website.