Middle Eastern Lives In America

Using data from in-depth interviews, this book brings to light the existence of Middle Easterners in America and shows the human complexity of their lives. This work gives special attention to how members of this ethnic group cope with, resist and combat discrimination.

Amir Marvasti is an Iranian-American. He was born in Tehran and moved to the United States in 1983 to escape the Iran-Iraq war. He is assistant professor of sociology at Penn State Altoona. His research interests include race and ethnicity, deviance, and social theory. He is the author of Being Homeless: Textual and Narrative Constructions and Qualitative Research in Sociology. His current research focuses on the immigration experiences of Middle Eastern Americans.


Karyn D. McKinney is assistant professor of sociology at Penn State Altoona. Her research interests include race, ethnicity, gender and identity. Her publications include The Many Costs of Racism (with Joe Feagin, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), an article with Feagin and Kevin Early appearing in The Indiana Law Review (2001), and chapters on whiteness, race and pedagogy in edited books. Her current work includes a book on young whites' understandings of race and racism (forthcoming, Routledge).