A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius author Dave Eggers will be presented the 2009 “Courage in Media” award at the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' 13th annual banquet Saturday at the Anaheim Hilton.
Anaheim-based CAIR-LA is honoring the Pulitzer Prize nominee for his latest novel Zeitoun, which is about a Muslim American man who volunteers to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina but is mistaken for a terrorist, detained by FEMA and subjected to a series of humiliations and detention at the hands of his own government.
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“Dave
Eggers has made accessible a powerful story about the joys and
tribulations of being an American Muslim in the wake of the Bush
administration's misguided policies in the War on Terror,” Hussam
Ayloush, executive director of CAIR-LA, says in a statement from the Muslim rights and advocacy organization. “His work deserves recognition
and thanks from American Muslims.”
The Bay Area resident, who founded the independent publishing house/quarterly literary journal McSweeney's, was a Pulitzer finalist in 2001 for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He's been in the pop-culture consciousness most recently for being the co-screenwriter of the popular film adaption of Maurice Sendak's classic 1963 children's book Where the Wild Things Are.
Atif Moon, 24, of Rancho Palos Verde, is set to receive the 2009
“Excellence in Leadership” award. Born with
neuroblastoma, a cancer of the spinal cord, and paralyzed
from waist down, Moon lives a full life, having co-founded the Center for
Global Understanding, an organization that encourages Muslim
American youth to participate in the civic process. He is also pursuing a master's degree in sports management
in spring 2010.
About 2,000 guests are
expected to turn out for Saturday's banquet, which will feature a keynote address from Sherman Jackson, professor of
Arabic N Islamic Studies and visiting professor of law at the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Larry Shaw, a North Carolina state senator and
CAIR national board chairman, and Shaikh Alauddin El-Bakri, imam of Saratoga mosque and co-founder of Inner City Muslim Action
Network, are also scheduled to speak. The event starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Hilton, 777 Convention Way, Anaheim.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.