Celebrating Arab American Heritage: Recommended Reading
April is Arab American Heritage Month, and the Popular Reading Display in the Hill Library's Learning Commons celebrates the literature and legacy of Arab Americans. Learn more about Arab American Heritage Month.
Published April 2023
A Woman Is No Man : a novel
Author: Etaf Rum
Summary: Set across two decades, A Woman Is No Man tells the story of Isra and her eldest daughter Deya. Both women are keen on academic pursuits but betrothed at a young age. Isra, born in Palestine, is whisked away to Brooklyn to marry Fareeda’s son Adam. Ten years after her parent’s death, Deya begins to unravel family secrets about her parents and her past as Fareeda is forcing her into marriage.
When we were Arabs : a Jewish family's forgotten history
Author: Massoud Hayoun, MD PhD.
Summary: Eppy Award-winning journalist Massoud Hayoun reclaims a nuanced Arab identity in a time where ethnic identity has been mangled for political ends. Once, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism, and being “Arab” didn’t necessarily mean you were Muslim. This story of Hayoun’s Jewish Arab family goes back two generations to understand what makes an Arab, what makes a Jew, and how the lines that divide were drawn.
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I was their American dream : a graphic memoir
Author: Malaka Gharib
Summary: I Was Their American Dream is the coming of age story of the daughter of Filipino and Egyptian parents navigating the tension between being an all-American kid and holding onto family cultural values. It is also a testament to the immigrants who come to America in search of a better life for themselves.
The other Americans
Author: Laila Lalami
Summary: Driss Guerraoui's family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love is born. Timely, riveting, and unforgettable, The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines that deeply divide American culture by race, religion, and class.
The girl who fell to Earth : a memoir
Author: Sophia al-Maria
Summary: The Girl Who Fell to Earth follows the journey of Sophia Al-Maria from the green valleys of Washington State to the dunes of the Arabian Gulf. Her mother intended the trip to be a sort of teenage cultural bootcamp, a chance to connect with her family’s desert-dwelling nomadic lifestyle. For Sophia, it is an adventure of freedom, young love, rebellion, and self-discovery.
Loom : a novel
Author: Thérèse Soukar Chehade
Summary: Three generations of the Zaydan family eagerly await the arrival of their cousin Eva, as a blizzard blankets the northeast United States. While Eva is stranded in New York City, Emilie, Josephine, and Marie reach out to their solitary neighbor, nicknamed Loom. This story, compressed into a single day, explores the layered experiences of an immigrant family living in Vermont.
A country called Amreeka : Arab roots, American stories
Author: Alia Malek
Summary: Featuring historic events and personal stories from the past sixty years told through the perspective of Arab Americans, A Country Called Amreeka shares dramatic narratives with an impassioned resonance normally reserved for fiction. These tales of immigrants becoming American, nostalgia for home, and alienation from an intolerant society come together to paint the mosaic of our shared history."
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You exist too much : a novel
Author: Zaina Arafat
Summary: Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces one queer Palestinian-American girl’s life in Brooklyn from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. Her search for love, and a place to call home, is split by travels between New York, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine and along the lines of cultural, religious, and sexual identities.
Sex and lies : true stories of women's intimate lives in the Arab world
Author: Leïla Slimani
Summary: "The women who spoke to me have experienced only what befalls most Moroccans: an inner conflict between the urge to shake off the tyranny of the community and the fear that freedom would bring all the traditional architecture of their world crashing down. All of them, as you will see, reveal ambivalence from time to time; they contradict themselves, claim their freedom then lower their eyes. They are trying to survive."—Leïla Slimani
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A Theory of Birds: poems
Author: Zaina Alsous
Summary: By layering inherited memory, historical record, critical theory, alternative geographies, and sharp observation A Theory of Birds reflects on extinct species as a metaphor for the violences perpetrated on othered bodies under the colonial gaze. Ecological preservation and Arab racial formation take on detachment, domination, and erasure to synthesize poetry in support of a decolonized mind."
Grape leaves : a century of Arab-American poetry
Editors: Gregory Orfalea and Sharif Elmusa.
Summary: This collection features twenty poets reflecting a rich and passionate literature that has largely been isolated from the American mainstream. Spanning the late nineteenth century through the 1980s, the authors share shifts and solidarity in the generations of Arab-Americans across the century.
Arab In America
Author: Toufic El Rassi
Summary: El Rassi illustrates the prejudices and discrimination Arabs and Muslims experience daily in American society through his own life story. Contending with ignorant teachers, racist neighbors, bullying classmates and a growing sense of alienation, he examines the roles that media and popular culture play in making it difficult to have an Arab identity in a society saturated with anti-Arab messages.