‘My Name Is Mohamed’: a Lebanese refugee's memoir of becoming ‘Mike’ in Canada

Mohamed Hammoud, who arrived in Canada as a child refugee from Lebanon's civil war, has written a memoir about losing and reclaiming his name, CBC News reported. The book, My Name Is Mohamed: An Immigrant's Journey of Resilience, Identity, and Faith, launches at Indigo in south London, Ontario, on 7 November.

Hammoud's family left Beirut through Syria, Egypt and France before reaching Montreal and then St. Thomas, Ontario, where a sister already lived. He was almost eight. Within days his relatives began calling him Mike to shield him from prejudice, and he lived for years behind what he calls different masks in order to be accepted.

"Our names are our identities," he told CBC's London Morning. When people cannot use or pronounce your name, he said, "you're not showing up authentically in this world."

He hopes readers will see their own story in his rather than a book about a man named Mohamed, and will free the parts of themselves they have hidden. "You don't have to be a Muslim, you don't have to be an immigrant" for that to resonate, he said, adding that identity is cemented through interactions with others.