Massoud Hayoun

"A vivid account of Massoud Hayoun's grandparents' lives in Egypt, Tunisia, France, Palestine, and Los Angeles, in which he reclaims his family's Jewish Arab identity"--Publisher's description.

A Jewish Family's Forgotten History

When We Were Arabs

John Balek

What it means to be Arab is a question that is a lot more complex than one might assume. As someone of Christian Arab ancestry it wasn't until two years ago that I was even made aware of the fact that Arab did not necessarily mean muslim. I've spent a lot of time learning about Arab history and the diverse amount of backgrounds and opinions that make up the Arab architype.

Author Massoud Hayoun explores this topic from his own family narrative. Being Jewish Arab may seem an anomoly or a contradiction to many who are either politically opposed to it or just uninformed on the history or North Africa and the Middle East. When We Were Arabs explores this history through Hayoun's family, detailing their lives and how their nationality, ethnicity, and religion informed how they were preceived; whether it be in a colonial context or abroad in more modern times.

This information is highly informative and really showcases how Jewish Arabs lived throughout North Africa and the diaspora. When I read A History of Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani at the beginning of this year my biggest disapointment was the lack of information on Arab people's outside of the birth of Islam and the postcolonial late 20th century. It's not that these other subjects were ignored entirely but overall it felt like a lot was not given its proper portrayal. When We Were Arabs definitely helped satisfy this desire to learn more about other people and time periods of Arab people.

My biggest issue with the book is its structure and length. This book is under 300 pages and has about six chapters. The way information is organized is very disconjointed and it jumps around from subject to subject within chapters. This book is part family memoir, part personal memoir, part historical account of North African Jews, and part historical evaluation of zionism. Especially with how short this book is, it doesn't feel like any of these subjects are really given their proper treatment. If it wasn't for the subject matter being so unique and how much there is to learn from the information in this book I don't think I would be as favorable of it. 

Overall there is still a lot of great information on the subject of Jewish Arabs and life in colonial and post colonial North Africa. I would still recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about Arab people and history as I haven't found another book that covers a subject like this.

When We Were Arabs A Jewish Family's Forgotten History

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