Since beginning these monthly awareness segments, I have truly enjoyed the experience of researching and seeking out books that I believe will not only captivate readers but also provoke thoughtful discussions and resonate deeply on an emotional level for individuals across the globe. The process of curating a selection of literature that reflects diverse perspectives has been both enlightening and fulfilling. It has become even more clear to me that it is not only beneficial to open one’s mind to authors who come from particularly marginalized groups, but it is also a vital opportunity for learning and personal growth. Throughout my life, I have always considered myself a diverse reader and an individual who embraces different cultures. However, through these segments, I have come to the realization that there is still plenty of room for growth, and opportunities to expand my own horizons even further. The world is filled with a wealth of cultures, histories, and narratives, much of which I am not fully acquainted with, and there is so much more knowledge to gain and understand.
Literature can be an expansive window into the diverse experiences of people from different backgrounds, offering insights into their unique cuisines, cultural practices, societal values, and historical contexts. Each book explored opens up new channels of thought and understanding, revealing layers of complexity that provide an opportunity to further broaden my worldview; there is always more to learn and appreciate. By engaging with and supporting diverse authors, I am able to connect with narratives that reflect the struggles, triumphs, and everyday lives of individuals whose experiences may differ significantly from mine. This connection will not only encourage a deeper understanding of the human experience, but also remind me of the shared threads that bind us all together despite our differences. My journey of discovery is always ongoing and each book I read serves as a stepping stone toward greater awareness and appreciation of the rich mosaic of human life.
As I continue to highlight and celebrate diverse literature I hope my readers will accompany me on this journey to uncover more stories, embrace a vast array of cultures, and be open to reading different perspectives that our world has to offer. Each month brings a new opportunity to grow, learn, and engage with the world in a thoughtful and more informed way.
-Fiction-
Remember Me To Lebanon by Evelyn Shakir
Publication Date: February 01, 2007
Description
Evelyn C. Shakir paints tales that are rich in history and background. She sets her stories in different eras, from the 1960s to the present, peopled with Lebanese women of different ages, sometimes writing letters, often reminiscing, looking back as far as the turn of the century.
In different ways, these first and second-generation women struggle with feminist issues overshadowed by the demands of dual cultures. In Young Ali a teenager tries to listen to her beloved father's time-honored tales of males in friendship and marriage. Aggie of House Calls is a deceased matriarch who returns to haunt her family with reminders of the customs she fought to uphold while alive. Shakir's other heroines include a thrice-divorced thirty-year-old woman quibbling with a modern matchmaker, an elderly non-Lebanese woman who spies on Muslim neighbors in the wake of 9/11, and a traditional wife and mother who thinks she has found a route out of Old World womanly duties. Many of the authors's women grapple with reclaiming or abandoning ancestral demands, and finessing age-old male-female relationships. In Oh, Lebanon a war-haunted Lebanese-born woman willfully departs from the mores of her upbringing, with surprising results. With agile humor and emotional truth, Shakir offers multiple perspectives on Lebanese women trying to change roles in a new landscape without surrendering cultural identity.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Remember Me to Lebanon, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 05 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780815608813>.
-Coming-of-Age-
Behind You is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
Publication Date: January 16, 2024
Description
An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion.
Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America.
Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations.
Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on and, shifting perspectives to weave a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts, and devastating secrets.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Behind You is the Sea, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 05 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780063324237>.
-Literary Fiction-
The Inheritance of Exile by Susan Muaddi Darraj
Publication Date: April 01, 2007
Description
In The Inheritance of Exile, Susan Muaddi Darraj expertly weaves a tapestry of the events and struggles in the lives of four Arab-American women.
Hanan, Nadia, Reema, and Aliyah search for a meaningful sense of home, caught in the cultural gap that exists between the Middle East and the United States.
Daughters of Palestinian immigrants who have settled into the diverse southern section of Philadelphia, the four friends live among Vietnamese, Italians, Irish, and other ethnic groups. Each struggles to reconcile her Arab identity with her American one. Muaddi Darraj adds the perspectives of the girls' mothers, presented in separate stories, which illuminate the often troubled relationship between first and second generations of immigrants.
Her suite of finely detailed portraits of arresting characters, told in evocative, vivid language, is sure to intrigue those seeking enjoyment and insight.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Inheritance of Exile, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 05 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780268035037>.
-Coming-of-Age / Domestic Fiction-
The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf by Mohja Kahf
Publication Date: September 01, 2006
Description
Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy is growing up in a devout, tightly knit Muslim family in 1970s Indiana, at the crossroads of bad polyester and Islamic dress codes. Along with her brother Eyad and her African-American friends, Hakim and Hanifa, she bikes the Indianapolis streets exploring the fault-lines between "Muslim" and "American."
When her picture-perfect marriage goes sour, Khadra flees to Syria and learns how to pray again. On returning to America she works in an eastern state -- taking care to stay away from Indiana, where the murder of her friend Tayiba's sister by Klan violence years before still haunts her. But when her job sends her to cover a national Islamic conference in Indianapolis, she's back on familiar ground: Attending a concert by her brother's interfaith band The Clash of Civilizations, dodging questions from the "aunties" and "uncles," and running into the recently divorced Hakim everywhere.
Beautifully written and featuring an exuberant cast of characters, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf charts the spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America, from five daily prayers to the Indy 500 car race. It is a riveting debut from an important new voice.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 05 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780786715190>.
-Memoir-
Looking for Palestine by Najla Said
Publication Date: September 02, 2014
Description
A frank and entertaining memoir—from the daughter of Edward Said—now in paperback.
The daughter of the famous intellectual and outspoken Palestinian advocate Edward Said and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her. She may have been born a Palestinian Lebanese American, but Said denied her true roots, even to herself—until, ultimately, the psychological toll of her self-hatred began to threaten her health.
As she grew older, she eventually came to see herself, her passions, and her identity more clearly. Today she is a voice for second-generation Arab Americans nationwide.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Looking for Palestine, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 05 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781594632754>.
-Memoir-
The Wrong End of the Table by Ayser Salman
Publication Date: March 05, 2019
Description
An Immigrant Love-Hate Story of What it Means to Be American. "A rare voice that is both relatable and unafraid to examine the complexities of her American identity.” —Reza Aslan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
You know that feeling of being at the wrong end of the table? Like you’re at a party but all the good stuff is happening out of earshot (#FOMO)? That’s life—especially for an immigrant.
What happens when a shy, awkward Arab girl with a weird name and an unfortunate propensity toward facial hair is uprooted from her comfortable (albeit fascist-regimed) homeland of Iraq and thrust into the cold, alien town of Columbus, Ohio—with its Egg McMuffins, Barbie dolls, and kids playing doctor everywhere you turned?
This is Ayser Salman’s story. First comes Emigration, then Naturalization, and finally Assimilation—trying to fit in among her blonde-haired, blue-eyed counterparts, and always feeling left out. On her journey to Americanhood, Ayser sees more naked butts at pre-kindergarten daycare that she would like, breaks one of her parents’ rules (“Thou shalt not participate as an actor in the school musical where a male cast member rests his head in thy lap”), and other things good Muslim Arab girls are not supposed to do. And, after the 9/11 attacks, she experiences the isolation of being a Muslim in her own country. It takes hours of therapy, fifty-five rounds of electrolysis, and some ill-advised romantic dalliances for Ayser to grow into a modern Arab American woman who embraces her cultural differences.
Part memoir and part how-not-to guide, The Wrong End of the Table is everything you wanted to know about Arabs but were afraid to ask, with chapters such as “Tattoos and Other National Security Risks,” “You Can’t Blame Everything on Your Period; Sometimes You’re Going to Be a Crazy Bitch: and Other Advice from Mom,” and even an open letter to Trump. This is the story of every American outsider on a path to find themselves in a country of beautiful diversity.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Wrong End of the Table, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 05 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781510742079>.
-Domestic & Urban Fiction-
A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum
Publication Date: February 04, 2020
Description
"Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.”
Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn.
There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children—four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear.
Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can’t help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man.
But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family—knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, A Woman is No Man, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780062699770>.
-Psychological Fiction-
Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
Publication Date: September 25, 2023
Description
Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine's debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more.
In Dearborn, a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans.
By turns wildly funny, incisive, and deeply moving, Dearborn introduces readers to an arresting new voice in contemporary fiction and invites us all to consider what it means to be part of a place and community, and how it is that we help one another survive.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Dearborn, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781959030294>.
-Political Fiction-
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
Publication Date: November 2, 2021
Description
As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the seventies to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.
Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Against a Loveless World, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781982137045>.
-Mystery/Romance/
Domestic Fiction-
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
Publication Date: March 17, 2020
Description
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 of American culture.
Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.
As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, each in their own voice, connections among them emerge. Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love—messy and unpredictable—is born.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Other Americans, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780525436034>.
-Memoir-
Love is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar
Publication Date: April 18, 2023
Description
Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat femme. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this "exuberant, defiant and introspective" memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America (The New York Times Book Review).
Randa Jarrar is a fearless voice of dissent who has been called "politically incorrect" (Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times). As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly dancer's journey across the United States in the 1940s, she sets off from her home in California to her parents' in Connecticut.
Coloring this road trip are journeys abroad and recollections of a life lived with daring. Reclaiming her autonomy after a life of survival--domestic assault as a child, and later, as a wife; threats and doxxing after her viral tweet about Barbara Bush--Jarrar offers a bold look at domestic violence, single motherhood, and sexuality through the lens of the punished-yet-triumphant body. On the way, she schools a rest-stop racist, destroys Confederate flags in the desert, and visits the Chicago neighborhood where her immigrant parents first lived.
Hailed as "one of the finest writers of her generation" (Laila Lalami), Jarrar delivers a euphoric and critical, funny and profound memoir that will speak to anyone who has felt erased, asserting: I am here. I am joyful.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Love is an Ex-Country, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781646221226>.
-LGBTQ+ Coming-of-Age-
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
Publication Date: July 13, 2021
Description
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria, but he’s been struggling ever since his mother’s ghost began visiting him each evening.
One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting birds. She mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare.
As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar’s signature “folkloric, lyrical, and emotionally intense...gorgeous and alive” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a “stunning…vivid, visceral, and urgent” (Booklist, starred review) exploration of loss, memory, migration, and identity.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Thirty Names of Night, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781982121525>.
-Historical Fiction-
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Publication Date: June 5, 2018
Description
Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses follows three generations of a Palestinian family and asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can’t go home again.
On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, Salma reads the girl’s future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.
Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus; Alia’s brother gets pulled into a politically militarized world he can’t escape; and Alia and her gentle-spirited husband move to Kuwait City, where they reluctantly build a life with their three children. When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, Alia and her family once again lose their home and their land, scattering to Beirut, Paris, Boston, and beyond. Soon Alia’s children begin families of their own, once again navigating the burdens (and blessings) of assimilation in foreign cities.
Salt Houses is a remarkable debut novel that challenges and humanizes an age-old conflict we might think we understand.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Salt Houses, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781328915856>.
-Coming-of-Age/
War Story-
Nour's Secret Library by Wafa' Tarnowska
Publication Date: March 29, 2022
Description
"A beautiful and poignant coming-of-age book . . . Based on the author's and illustrator's personal experiences, this unique war story is full of hope and resilience that shines through even the worst of situations" - School Library Journal, starred review
The world of books is wonderful, Nour thought, looking at the piles of books around her. Like a galaxy full of stars. Some are shinier than others, but together they make the sky sparkle.
When their Syrian city is plagued with bombings, young Nour and her cousin Amir create a secret underground library, finding hope and escape for the people in their community within its walls. Based on the author's life and inspired by true events, Nour's Secret Library reveals the power of books to heal, transport, and create safe havens in difficult times.
Highlights the resilience of children and the comfort of stories
Inspired by real events and personal experience
Perfect for young readers learning about empathy and courage
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Nour's Secret Library, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781646862917>.
-LGBTQ+ Romantasy-
The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai
Publication Date: November 21, 2023
Description
From debut author Hadeer Elsbai comes the first book in an incredibly powerful new duology, set wholly in a new world, but inspired by modern Egyptian history, about two young women—Nehal, a spoiled aristocrat used to getting what she wants and Giorgina, a poor bookshop worker used to having nothing—who find they have far more in common, particularly in their struggle for the rights of women and their ability to fight for it with forbidden elemental magic
As a waterweaver, Nehal can move and shape any water to her will, but she’s limited by her lack of formal education. She desires nothing more than to attend the newly opened Weaving Academy, take complete control of her powers, and pursue a glorious future on the battlefield with the first all-female military regiment. But her family cannot afford to let her go—crushed under her father’s gambling debt, Nehal is forcibly married into a wealthy merchant family. Her new spouse, Nico, is indifferent and distant and in love with another woman, a bookseller named Giorgina.
Giorgina has her own secret, however: she is an earthweaver with dangerously uncontrollable powers. She has no money and no prospects. Her only solace comes from her activities with the Daughters of Izdihar, a radical women’s rights group at the forefront of a movement with a simple goal: to attain recognition for women to have a say in their own lives. They live very different lives and come from very different means, yet Nehal and Giorgina have more in common than they think. The cause—and Nico—brings them into each other’s orbit, drawn in by the group’s enigmatic leader, Malak Mamdouh, and the urge to do what is right.
But their problems may seem small in the broader context of their world, as tensions are rising with a neighboring nation that desires an end to weaving and weavers. As Nehal and Giorgina fight for their rights, the threat of war looms in the background, and the two women find themselves struggling to earn—and keep—a lasting freedom.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Daughters of Izdihar, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780063114760>.
-LGBTQ+ Romantasy-
The Weavers of Alamaxa by Hadeer Elsbai
Publication Date: March 19, 2024
Description
Following up on one of the most exciting fantasy debuts, The Daughters of Izdihar, Hadeer Elsbai concludes her Alamaxa Duology—inspired by Egyptian history and myth—with a tale of magic, war, betrayal, sisterhood, and love.
The world is on fire...but some women can control it.
The Daughters of Izdihar—a group of women fighting for the vote and against the patriarchal rule of Parliament—have finally made strides in having their voices heard...only to find them drowned out by the cannons of the fundamentalist Ziranis. As long as Alamaxa continues to allow for the elemental magic of the weavers—and insist on allowing an academy to teach such things—the Zirani will stop at nothing to end what they perceive is a threat to not only their way of life, but the entire world.
Two such weavers, Nehal and Giorgina, had come together despite their differences to grow both their political and weaving power. But after the attack, Nehal wakes up in a Zirani prison, and Giorgina is on the run in her besieged city. If they can reunite again, they can rally Alamaxa to fight off the encroaching Zirani threat. Yet with so much in their way—including a contingent of Zirani insurgents with their own ideas about rebellion—this will be no easy task.
And the last time a weaver fought back, the whole world was shattered.
Two incredible women are all that stands before an entire army. But they’ve fought against power before and won. This time, though, it’s no longer about rhetoric.
This time it’s about magic and blood.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Weavers of Alamaxa, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780063114807>.
-Coming-of-Age-
From Here by Luma Mufleh
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
Description
In her coming-of-age memoir, refugee advocate Luma Mufleh writes of her tumultuous journey to reconcile her identity as a gay Muslim woman and a proud Arab-turned-American refugee.
With no word for “gay” in Arabic, Luma may not have known what to call the feelings she had growing up in Jordan during the 1980s, but she knew well enough to keep them secret. It was clear that not only would her family have trouble accepting her, but trapped in a conservative religious society, she could’ve also been killed if anyone discovered her sexuality. Luma spent her teenage years increasingly desperate to find a way out, and finally found one when she was accepted into college in the United States. Once there, Luma begins the agonizing process of applying for political asylum, which ensures her safety—but causes her family to break ties with her.
Becoming a refugee in America is a rude awakening, and Luma must rely on the grace of friends and strangers alike as she builds a new life and finally embraces her full self. Slowly, she’s able to forge a new path forward with both her biological and chosen families, eventually founding Fugees Family, a nonprofit dedicated to the education and support of refugee children in the United States.
As hopeful as it is heartrending, From Here is a coming-of-age memoir about one young woman’s search for belonging and the many meanings of home for those who must leave theirs.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, From Here, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780593354452>.
-Memoir-
The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia Al-Maria
Publication Date: November 27, 2012
Description
Award-winning filmmaker and writer Sophia Al-Maria’s The Girl Who Fell to Earth is a funny and wry coming-of-age memoir about growing up in between American and Gulf Arab cultures. Part family saga and part personal quest, The Girl Who Fell to Earth traces Al-Maria’s journey to make a place for herself in two different worlds.
When Sophia Al-Maria's mother sends her away from rainy Washington State to stay with her husband's desert-dwelling Bedouin family in Qatar, she intends it to be a sort of teenage cultural boot camp. What her mother doesn't know is that there are some things about growing up that are universal. In Qatar, Sophia is faced with a new world she'd only imagined as a child. She sets out to find her freedom, even in the most unlikely of places.
The Girl Who Fell to Earth takes readers from the green valleys of the Pacific Northwest to the dunes of the Arabian Gulf and on to the sprawling chaos of Cairo. Struggling to adapt to her nomadic lifestyle, Sophia is haunted by the feeling that she is perpetually in exile: hovering somewhere between two families, two cultures, and two worlds. She must make a place for herself—a complex journey that includes finding young love in the Arabian Gulf, rebellion in Cairo, and, finally, self-discovery in the mountains of Sinai.
The Girl Who Fell to Earth heralds the arrival of an electric new talent and takes us on the most personal of quests: the voyage home.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780061999758>.
-Magical Realism/
Coming-of-Age/ Political Fiction-
The Frightened Ones by Dima Wannous
Publication Date: August 25, 2020
Description
A timely and haunting novel from an exciting new voice in international literature, set in present-day Syria
In her therapist's waiting room in Damascus, Suleima meets a strange and reticent man named Naseem, and they soon begin a tense affair. But when Naseem, a writer, flees Syria for Germany, he sends Suleima the unfinished manuscript of his novel. To Suleima's surprise, she and the novel's protagonist are uncannily similar. As she reads, Suleima's past overwhelms her and she has no idea what to trust--Naseem's pages, her own memory, or nothing at all?
Narrated in alternating chapters by Suleima and the mysterious woman portrayed in Naseem's novel, The Frightened Ones is a boundary-blurring, radical examination of the effects of oppression on one's sense of identity, the effects of collective trauma, and a moving window into life inside Assad's Syria.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Frightened Ones, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780525655138>.
-Political Religious Fiction-
The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah
Publication Date: April 6, 2021
Description
The Beauty of Your Face tells a uniquely American story in powerful, evocative prose. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter--radicalized by the online alt-right--attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories, and into a profound and "moving" (Bustle) exploration of one woman's life in a nation at odds with its ideals.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Beauty of Your Face, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780393542042>.
-Humorous Coming-of-Age-
The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood
Publication Date: January 11, 2022
Description
Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s to San Francisco in 2016, The Bad Muslim Discount is an inclusive, comic novel about Muslim immigrants finding their way in modern America.
“Masood’s novel presents a stereoscopic, three-dimensional view of contemporary Muslim America: the way historical conflict in the Middle East lingers in individual lives, the way gossip travels in a close-knit immigrant community.” —The New York Times Book Review
It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.
At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl living in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. When Anvar and Safwa's worlds collide as two remarkable, strong-willed adults, their contradictory, intertwined fates will rock their community, and families, to their core.
The Bad Muslim Discount is an irreverent, poignant, and often hysterically funny debut novel by an amazing new voice. With deep insight, warmth, and an irreverent sense of humor, Syed M. Masood examines universal questions of identity, faith (or lack thereof), and belonging through the lens of Muslim Americans.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Bad Muslim Discount, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781984897411>.
-Coming-of-Age-
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Description
Set in the Arab immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, following three siblings coming of age over the course of one Ramadan, "a moving look at family, survival, and celebration" (Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America).
"A gorgeously written and profoundly intimate debut." —Etaf Rum, author of New York Times bestseller A Woman Is No Man
It’s the holy month of Ramadan, and twin sisters Amira and Lina are about to graduate high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On the precipice of adulthood, they plan to embark on a summer of teenage revelry, trying on new identities and testing the limits of what they can get away with while still under their parents’ roof. But the twins' expectations of a summer of freedom collide with their older brother's return from prison, whose mysterious behavior threatens to undo the delicate family balance.
Meanwhile, outside the family’s apartment, a storm is brewing in Bay Ridge. A raid on a local business sparks a protest that brings the Arab community together, and a senseless act of violence threatens to tear them apart. Everyone’s motives are called into question as an alarming sense of disquiet pervades the neighborhood. With everything spiraling out of control, how will Amira and Lina know who they can trust?
A gorgeously written, intimate family story and a polyphonic portrait of life under the specter of Islamophobia, Between Two Moons challenges the reader to interrogate their own assumptions, asking questions of allegiance to faith, family, and community, and what it means to be a young Muslim in America.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Between Two Moons, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780593467824>.
-Non-Fiction-
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? by Moustafa Bayoumi
Publication Date: July 28, 2009
Description
“Bayoumi offers a revealing portrait of life for people who are often scrutinized but seldom heard from.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Wholly intelligent and sensitively-drawn, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? is an important investigation into the hearts and minds of young Arab-Americans. This significant and eminently readable work breaks through preconceptions and delivers a fresh take on a unique and vital community. Moustafa Bayoumi's voice is refreshingly frank, personable, and true.” —Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Origin, Crescent, and The Language of Baklava
An eye-opening look at how young Arab- and Muslim-Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy
Just over a century ago , W.E.B. Du Bois posed a probing question in his classic The Souls of Black Folk: How does it feel to be a problem? Now, Moustafa Bayoumi asks the same about America's new "problem"-Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, home to the largest Arab-American population in the United States. He moves beyond stereotypes and clichés to reveal their often unseen struggles, from being subjected to government surveillance to the indignities of workplace discrimination. Through it all, these young men and women persevere through triumphs and setbacks as they help weave the tapestry of a new society that is, at its heart, purely American.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780143115410>.
-Satirical Domestic Fiction-
Tehrangeles by Porochista Khakpour
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Description
"Think the Kardashians meet Little Women and Crazy Rich Asians…An indelible, uproarious snapshot of young womanhood."—Vogue
“Delightfully twisted and heartfelt...Khakpour is a satirist extraordinaire." —Kevin Kwan • “Funny, devastating, and filled with dazzlingly accurate observations about the absurdities of our age, this is a story and family that will stay with you long after you finish."—Marjan Kamali
Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all—a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters. There’s Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll.
Each of the Milanis—even their aloof Persian cat Pari—has something to hide, but the looming scrutiny of fame also threatens to bring the family closer than ever. Dramatic, biting yet full of heart, Tehrangeles is a tragicomic saga about high-functioning family dysfunction and the ever-present struggle to accept one’s true self.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Tehrangeles, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781524747909>.
-YA Fantasy-
We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal
Publication Date: December 1, 2020
Description
Set in a richly detailed world inspired by ancient Arabia, Hafsah Faizal's We Hunt the Flame—first in the Sands of Arawiya duology—is a gripping debut of discovery, conquering fear, and taking identity into your own hands.
People lived because she killed. People died because he lived.
Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. Both Zafira and Nasir are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya—but neither wants to be.
War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow. When Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover a lost artifact that can restore magic to her suffering world and stop the Arz, Nasir is sent by the sultan on a similar mission: retrieve the artifact and kill the Hunter. But an ancient evil stirs as their journey unfolds—and the prize they seek may pose a threat greater than either can imagine.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, We Hunt the Flame, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781250250797>.
-YA Fantasy-
A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
Publication Date: February 20, 2024
Description
Now available in a deluxe paperback edition with gorgeous stenciled edges, Hafsah Faizal's deliciously propulsive vampire-fantasy teems with slow burn romance, found family, and revenge, led by an orphan girl willing to do whatever it takes to save her self-made kingdom.
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it—she can’t do the job alone.
Calling on some of the city’s most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it. Dark, action-packed, and swoonworthy, this is Hafsah Faizal better than ever.
VAMPIRES AND VENGENANCE ARE BREWING...
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, A Tempest of Tea, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780374389406>.
-Fairytale Psychological Fiction-
The Jinn Daughter by Rania Hanna
Publication Date: April 16, 2024
Description
A stunning debut novel and an impressive feat of storytelling that pulls together mythology, magic, and ancient legend in the gripping story of a mother's struggle to save her only daughter
Nadine is a jinn tasked with one job: telling the stories of the dead. She rises every morning to gather pomegranate seeds--the souls of the dead--that have fallen during the night. With her daughter Layala at her side, she eats the seeds and tells their stories. Only then can the departed pass through the final gate of death.
But when the seeds stop falling, Nadine knows something is terribly wrong. All her worst fears are confirmed when she is visited by Kamuna, Death herself and ruler of the underworld, who reveals her desire for someone to replace her: it is Layala she wants.
Nadine will do whatever it takes to keep her daughter safe, but Kamuna has little patience and a ruthless drive to get what she has come for. Layala's fate, meanwhile, hangs in the balance.
Rooted in Middle Eastern mythology, Rania Hanna deftly weaves subtle, yet breathtaking, magic through this vivid and compelling story that has at its heart the universal human desire to, somehow, outmaneuver death.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Jinn Daughter, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781649033635>.
-Poetry-
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
Publication Date: April 06, 2021
Description
By turns aggressively reckless and fiercely protective, always guided by faith and ancestry, Threa Almontaser’s incendiary debut asks how mistranslation can be a form of self-knowledge and survival. A love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before, Almontaser’s polyvocal collection sneaks artifacts to and from worlds, repurposing language and adapting to the space between cultures. Half-crunk and hungry, speakers move with the force of what cannot be contained by the limits of the American imagination, and instead invest in troublemaking and trickery, navigate imperial violence across multiple accents and anthems, and apply gang signs in henna, utilizing any means necessary to form a semblance of home. In doing so, The Wild Fox of Yemen fearlessly rides the tension between carnality and tenderness in the unruly human spirit.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Wild Fox of Yemen, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781644451465>.
-Poetry-
Little Houses by Athena Nassar
Publication Date: January 10, 2023
Description
"a part of you wants to stay wedged / in the throat of what will kill you." Athena Nassar's piercing debut full-length collection, Little Houses, unravels one American family's conflicted Southern existence. Nassar's speaker first surfaces from an alligator's mouth to beckon readers through a series of revolving doors. Behind one door, she reckons with a complex history of colonization; behind another, Princess Peach mourns her own hard-coded impotence. In this way, Nassar does not shy from exploring all sides of her speaker's sexuality, heritage, and familial connections. To occupy her Little Houses is to find freedom in contradiction.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Little Houses, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781951979393>.
-Saga/Literary Fiction-
Too Soon by Betty Shamieh
Publication Date: January 28, 2025
Description
“A Palestinian American Sex and the City.” —The Atlantic • “Wonderfully brash and sparkling...This book fills in gaps in our understanding.” —Oprah Daily • “Shamieh balances her characters’ painful family history and their boisterously funny voices.” —New Yorker
A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women.
Arabella gets an unexpected chance at love when she’s thrust into a conflict and history she’s tried to avoid all her life.
Zoya is playing matchmaker for her last unmarried granddaughter and stirring up buried memories.
Naya is keeping a secret from her children that will change all their lives.
Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic—that might garner international attention—in the West Bank. Her mother, Naya, and grandmother, Zoya, hatch a plot to match her with Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz, since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster...
With biting hilarity, Too Soon introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices. This dramatic saga follows one family’s epic journey fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, hustling in the New York theatre scene post-9/11, and daring to stage a show in Palestine in 2012. Upon learning one of them is living on borrowed time, the three women fight to live, make art, and love on their own terms. A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut, Too Soon illuminates our shared history and asks, how can we set ourselves free?
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Too Soon, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781668046548>.
-Poetry-
Cast Away by Naomi Shihab Nye
Publication Date: February 11, 2020
Description
“Nye at her engaging, insightful best.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Acclaimed poet and Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye shines a spotlight on the things we cast away, from plastic water bottles to those less fortunate, in this collection of more than eighty original and never-before-published poems. A deeply moving, sometimes funny, and always provocative poetry collection for all ages.
“How much have you thrown away in your lifetime already? Do you ever think about it? Where does this plethora of leavings come from? How long does it take you, even one little you, to fill the can by your desk?” ?Naomi Shihab Nye
National Book Award Finalist, Young People’s Poet Laureate, and devoted trash-picker-upper Naomi Shihab Nye explores these questions and more in this original collection of poetry that features more than eighty new poems. “I couldn’t save the world, but I could pick up trash,” she says in her introduction to this stunning volume.
With poems about food wrappers, lost mittens, plastic straws, refugee children, trashy talk, the environment, connection, community, responsibility to the planet, politics, immigration, time, junk mail, trash collectors, garbage trucks, all that we carry and all that we discard, this is a rich, engaging, moving, and sometimes humorous collection for readers ages twelve to adult.
Includes ideas for writing, recycling, and reclaiming, and an index.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Cast Away, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780062907691>.
-Memoir-
The Weight of Ghosts by Laila Halaby
Publication Date: September 05, 2023
Description
The Weight of Ghosts is a lyrical memoir by an author struggling with the death of her older son and sifting through the details of her life.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Weight of Ghosts, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781636281346>.
-Historical Fiction-
Fencing with the King by Diana Abu-Jaber
Publication Date: March 15, 2022
Description
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of the MonthA mesmerizing breakthrough novel of family myths and inheritances by the award-winning author of Crescent.
The King of Jordan is turning 60! How better to celebrate the occasion than with his favorite pastime—fencing—and with his favorite sparring partner, Gabriel Hamdan, who must be enticed back from America, where he lives with his wife and his daughter, Amani.
Amani, a divorced poet, jumps at the chance to accompany her father to his homeland for the King’s birthday. Her father’s past is a mystery to her—even more so since she found a poem on blue airmail paper slipped into one of his old Arabic books, written by his mother, a Palestinian refugee who arrived in Jordan during World War I. Her words hint at a long-kept family secret, carefully guarded by Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King, who has quite personal reasons for inviting his brother to the birthday party. In a sibling rivalry that carries ancient echoes, the Hamdan brothers must face a reckoning, with themselves and with each other—one that almost costs Amani her life.
With sharp insight into modern politics and family dynamics, taboos around mental illness, and our inescapable relationship to the past, Fencing with the King asks how we contend with inheritance: familial and cultural, hidden and openly contested. Shot through with warmth and vitality, intelligence and spirit, it is absorbing and satisfying on every level, a wise and rare literary treat.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Fencing with the King, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 17 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780393867725>.
-Domestic & Urban Fiction-
Arabian Jazz by Diana Abu-Jaber
Publication Date: April 01, 2003
Description
In Diana Abu-Jaber's "impressive, entertaining" (Chicago Tribune) first novel, a small, poor-white community in upstate New York becomes home to the transplanted Jordanian family of Matussem Ramoud: his grown daughters, Jemorah and Melvina; his sister Fatima; and her husband, Zaeed. The widower Matuseem loves American jazz, kitschy lawn ornaments, and, of course, his daughters.
Fatima is obsessed with seeing her nieces married--Jemorah is nearly thirty! Supernurse Melvina is firmly committed to her work, but Jemorah is ambivalent about her identity and role. Is she Arab? Is she American? Should she marry and, if so, whom?
Winner of the Oregon Book Award and finalist for the National PEN/Hemingway Award, Arabian Jazz is "a joy to read...You will be tempted to read passages out loud. And you should" (Boston Globe). USA Today praises Abu-Jaber's "gift for dialogue...her Arab-American rings musically, and hilariously, true."
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Arabian Jazz, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 18 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780393324228>.
-Contemporary Fiction-
Dinarzad's Children Edited by Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa
Publication Date: November 01, 2009
Description
The first edition of Dinarzad's Children was a groundbreaking and popular anthology that brought to light the growing body of short fiction being written by Arab Americans. This expanded edition includes sixteen new stories -thirty in all-and new voices and is now organized into sections that invite readers to enter the stories from a variety of directions. Here are stories that reveal the initial adjustments of immigrants, the challenges of forming relationships, the political nuances of being Arab American, the vision directed towards homeland, and the ongoing search for balance and identity. The contributors are D. H. Melhem, Mohja Khaf, Rabih Alameddine, Rawi Hage, Laila Halaby, Patricia Sarrafian Ward, Alia Yunis, Diana Abu Jaber, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Samia Serageldin, Alia Yunis, Joseph Geha, May Monsoor Munn, Frances Khirallah Nobel, Nabeel Abraham, Yussef El Guindi, Hedy Habra, Randa Jarrar, Zahie El Kouri, Amal Masri, Sahar Mustafah, Evelyn Shakir, David Williams, Pauline Kaldas, and Khaled Mattawa.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Dinarzad's Children, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 18 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781557289124>.
-Fiction-
The Man Who Guarded the Bomb by Gregory Orfalea
Publication Date: April 14, 2010
Description
A boy finds himself alone with his first love in a toboggan stalled atop the Matterhorn at Disneyland. A woman, bitter about her marriage to a man turned blind, must decide if he lives or dies. A man haunted by his role in creating the H-bomb suddenly disappears in old age, only to turn up at Alamagordo, seeking an Indian and redemption. Such characters, at the crossroads of emotion and ethics, confounding loss and resurrection, populate this unforgettable collection of tales. Loosely connected, the stories chronicle the lives of the Matters, a captivating, tragic, yet ultimately exultant Arab American family.
Spanning continents and a century, the stories center on the balm that human relationships offer. In "The Chandelier," a boy desperate to feed his starving family hauls a stolen chandelier over a snowy mountain in Lebanon during World War I. A young Mexican nurse and her lover wind their way through eighteenth-century California missions in "Fabiola." Against the backdrop of the September 11 attacks, an Arab American man is thrown from a bus, echoing past racial discriminations, in "Get Off the Bus."
With a poet's ear and a historian's keen eye for detail, Orfalea offers readers beautifully crafted stories filled with flawed yet irresistible characters who are rendered with great tenderness and aching complexity.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Man Who Guarded the Bomb, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 18 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780815609773>.
-Biography-
Messengers of the Lost Battalion by Gregory Orfalea
Publication Date: May 01, 1999
Description
The author of Before the Flames and the son of a member of the ill-fated infantry battalion discusses America's 551st Battalion and their heroic, little-known role during World War II's Battle of the Bulge.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Messengers of the Lost Battalion, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 18 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780684871097>.
-Memoir-
Dancing into the Light by Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki
Publication Date: September 05, 2023
Description
Set against the backdrop of the early American presence in Iran under the Shah, and the burgeoning years of Kuwait’s early oil boom, Dancing into the Light is Kathryn Abdul-Baki’s memoir of growing up within both the expatriate Western communities and the larger Middle Eastern society of Kuwait and Jerusalem. Hers is a story of belonging to two vastly different cultures and finding her place within both, and the search to find the inherent harmony in worlds at odds with each other. She is already caught in both the joys of and the struggle to be both Arab and American, yet not fully either, when her young life of promise is disrupted by tragedy. But instead of derailing her life, her mother’s death opens the door to deeper love and support from other places within Kathryn’s family.
Dancing into the Light is a story of love, loss, and renewal, and of overcoming devastating early trauma through music, dancing, and the love and devotion of strong American and Arab women.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Dancing into the Light, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 18 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781647425371>.
-Cookbook-
Sofreh by Nasim Alikhani with Theresa Gambacorta
Publication Date: June 27, 2023
Description
The much-anticipated cookbook—an exquisite collection of Persian recipes—from the James Beard–nominated chef of Sofreh, one of Brooklyn’s most acclaimed restaurants.
A Best Book of the Year: Los Angeles Times, Epicurious
"I got lost in the flavors of Nasim’s mint oil, saffron rice pudding, and meltingly tender chicken stew laced with sweet-tart flavors from Pink Lady Apples and sour cherries. Her naan e-barbari is the best!" —Suzy Karadsheh, New York Times best-selling author of The Mediterranean Dish Cookbook
Growing up in Isfahan, a province in central Iran, Nasim Alikhani was a passionate cook from childhood, spending the first years of her life in the kitchen alongside her mother. And so, when she departed after the revolution it was by re-creating the dishes of her youth that she was able to feel connected to her home. After decades of cooking for friends and family, at the age of fifty-nine she opened Sofreh restaurant in Brooklyn, to share the food and warm culture of her native Iran with a wider circle.
Now, in her first cookbook, Alikhani offers her readers what she has lovingly been providing for those who know her and who eat in her restaurant: the true tastes of Iran. Here is the timeless, soul-satisfying food of Persia, with its trademark bold herb and spice flavors, succulent, savory stews and stuffed meats, vast bounty of brightly pickled vegetables and fresh fruits, and much, much more.
Containing more than 120 recipes, Sofreh brings together traditional Iranian dishes and modern Sofreh favorites.
Sour Cherry Rice
Roasted Cauliflower with Shallot Yogurt and Pistachios
Sour Chicken Stew
Rosewater and Cardamom Custard
and, of course, everything you need to create a true Iranian breakfast spread at home
A joyous celebration of one of the world’s great cuisines, this essential guide will delight home cooks everywhere.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Sofreh, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 18 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780593320747>.
-Creative Nonfiction-
Hadha Baladuna Edited by Ghassan Zeineddine, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell
Publication Date: June 07, 2022
Description
Named a Michigan Notable Book for 2023 by the Library of Michigan! A vibrant collection of personal essays and poems exploring the diverse range of the Arab American experience, as writers explore the notions of home, belonging, and social mobility.
Arab American Book Award winner; a Michigan Notable Book for 2023, and a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards!
Hadha Baladuna ("this is our country") is the first work of creative nonfiction in the field of Arab American literature that focuses entirely on the Arab diaspora in Metro Detroit, an area with the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the US. Narratives move from a young Lebanese man in the early 1920s peddling his wares along country roads to an aspiring Iraqi-Lebanese poet who turns to the music of Tupac Shakur for inspiration. The anthology then pivots to experiences growing up Arab American in Detroit and Dearborn, capturing the cultural vibrancy of urban neighborhoods and dramatizing the complexity of what it means to be Arab, particularly from the vantage point of biracial writers. Included in these works is a fearless account of domestic and sexual abuse and a story of a woman who comes to terms with her queer identity in a community that is not entirely accepting. The anthology concludes with explorations of political activism dating back to the 1960s and Dearborn's shifting demographic landscape.
Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging contains stories of immigration and exile by following newcomers' attempts to assimilate into American society. Editors Ghassan Zeineddine, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell have assembled a cast of emerging and established writers from a wide array of communities, including cultural heritages originating from Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Yemen. The strong pattern in Arab Detroit today is to oppose marginalization through avid participation in almost every form of American identity-making. This engaged stance is not a byproduct of culture, but a new way of thinking about the US in relation to one's homeland.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Hadha Baladuna, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 18 March 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780814349250>.
The best thing about celebrating different awarenesses every month is that we can learn to celebrate and appreciate cultures outside of our own. They highlight how identity can influence experiences and perspectives, encouraging us to engage in meaningful conversations about privilege, bias, and social justice. In addition to educational benefits, these monthly celebrations also encourage community and solidarity. We learn to recognize and value the diversity that exists within our communities and the world at large. What authors are you looking forward to exploring during Arab American heritage month? Drop a comment, a rating, and let me know your thoughts. Thanks for reading! If you're interested in purchasing any of these books for yourself, feel free to check out the link below.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link, meaning I may earn a small commission if you purchase through it.
Comments