Arab American Heritage Month

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In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles.

Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist commitments and ambiguities and to highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the countries in which they live wage wars in the lands of their ancestors.

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This book assembles a diverse group of contributors whose essays range from the scholarly to the artistic and include voices that are Palestinian, Iraqi, Yemeni, and Lebanese; Muslim and Christian; American born and immigrant. In Detroit, new realities of political marginalization and empowerment are evolving side by side. As they explore the complex demands of life, the contributors to this volume create vivid portraits of a community that has fought back successfully against attempts to deny its national identity and diminish its civil rights.

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This book brings together 21 prominent scholars from a wide range of perspectives to take a close look at the status of Arabs in North America. They examine Arab American identity, political activism, and attempts by Arab immigrants to achieve respect and recognition in their new homes. They address both the present situation for Arab Americans and prospects for their future.

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What does it mean to be American?
Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth--such as national origin, race, or gender--that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today. Throughout the book, she poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained, keeping the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people whom America embraces with one arm, and pushes away with the other.

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Spanning the 1990s to the present, Carol Fadda-Conrey takes in the sweep of literary and cultural texts by Arab-American writers in order to understand the ways in which their depictions of Arab homelands, whether actual or imagined, play a crucial role in shaping cultural articulations of US citizenship and belonging. By asserting themselves within a US framework while maintaining connections to their homelands, Arab-Americans contest the blanket representations of themselves as dictated by the US nation-state.

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In this book, Hudda Ibrahim unpacks the immigration narrative of Somali Americans and explains why nearly 20 percent have chosen to settle in Minnesota. From Somalia to Snow gives readers an invaluable insider's look into the lives and culture of our Somali neighbors and the important challenges they face. Designed with a diverse audience in mind, this book is a must-read for students, health-care professionals, business owners, social service agencies, and anyone who wants to better understand Somali people in Minnesota.

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Over the past 15 years, the town of Lewiston, Maine has improbably become one of the most Islamic towns in America. Some 6,000 Somali immigrants have settled there, drastically changing the makeup of a town of 36,000 people in total.

Cynthia Anderson tells the story of this fractious yet resilient town and how it is thriving in a new era. With empathy and honesty, she delivers a dramatic portrait of a community grappling with change, while humanizing one of the most defining political issues in America today.

Winner of the 2023 Arab American Book Award, Evelyn Shakir Nonfiction

Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them. This intimate portrait follows the stories of individuals such as farmer Mary Juma, pacifist Kassem Rameden, poet Aliya Hassen, and bookmaker Kamel Osman from the early 1900s through World War I, the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and World War II. Its story-driven approach places Syrian Americans at the center of key American institutions like the assembly line, the family farm, the dance hall, and the public school, showing how the first two generations of Midwestern Syrians created a life that was Arab, Muslim, and American, all at the same time.

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The story of Somalis in Minnesota begins with three words: sahan, war, and martisoor. Driven from their homeland by civil war and famine, one group of Somali sahan (pioneers) discovered well-paying jobs in the city of Marshall, Minnesota. Soon the war (news) traveled that not only was employment available but the people in this northern state, so different in climate from their African homeland, were generous in martisoor (hospitality) just like the Somali people themselves.

Ahmed Yusuf introduces readers to these varied communities, exploring economic and political life, religious and cultural practices, and successes in education and health care.

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This gripping story follows one boy's journey into young adulthood and offers an intimate account of modern immigration. Abdi Nor Iftin grew up amidst a blend of cultures, far from the United States. At home in Somalia, his mother entertained him with vivid folktales and bold stories detailing her rural, nomadic upbringing. As he grew older, he spent his days following his father, a basketball player, through the bustling street of the capital city of Mogadishu. But when the threat of civil war reached Abdi's doorstep, his family was forced to flee to safety.

Through the turbulent years of war, young Abdi found solace in popular American music and films. Abdi shares every part of his journey, and his courageous account reminds readers that everyone deserves the chance to build a brighter future for themselves.

Discover the true stories of nineteen unstoppable Muslim women of the twenty-first century who have risen above challenges, doubts, and sometimes outright hostility to blaze trails in a wide range of fields. Whether it was the culinary arts, fashion, sports, government, science, entertainment, education, or activism, these women never took "no" for an answer, or allowed themselves to be silenced. Instead, they worked to rise above and not only achieve their dreams, but become influential leaders.

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A rare feminist perspective on a people and a culture in one of the most tumultuous regions in the world. Nadia, Captive of Hope is the autobiography of Fay Afaf Kanafani, an Arab Muslim woman born in Beirut in 1918.

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Hirsi Ali tells of coming to America to build a new life, an ocean away from the death threats made to her by European Islamists, the strife she witnessed, and the inner conflict she suffered. She calls on key institutions of the West--including universities, the feminist movement, and the Christian churches--to enact specific, innovative remedies that would help other Muslim immigrants to overcome the challenges she has experienced and to resist the fatal allure of fundamentalism and terrorism.

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A fatal medical diagnosis in 1991 convinced Edward Said that he should leave a record of where he was born and spent his childhood, and so with this memoir he rediscovers the Arab landscape of his early years. Vast changes occurred as Palestine became Israel, Lebanon was transformed by twenty years of civil war, and the colonial Egypt of King Farouk disappeared forever by 1952. Underscoring all is the confusion of identity as Said had to come to terms with the dissonance of being an American citizen, a Christian, and a Palestinian, and, ultimately, an outsider.

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Sweeping arrests following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the incarceration and deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, based almost solely on their national origin and immigration status.

In This Muslim American Life, Moustafa Bayoumi reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans. In gripping essays, Bayoumi exposes how contemporary politics, movies, novels, media experts and more have together produced a culture of fear and suspicion that not only willfully forgets the Muslim-American past, but also threatens all of our civil liberties in the present.

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The personal story of a Palestinian born in Haifa in 1935. As a result of the Israeli/Palestinian war of 1948, he and his family became refugees in Tyre, Lebanon. Later, he emigrated to the United States where he received a PhD in theoretical physics and taught, as a university professor, for more than three decades.

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There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism. Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun finds his voice by telling his family's story.

To reclaim a worldly, nuanced Arab identity is, for Hayoun, part of the larger project to recall a time before ethnic identity was mangled for political ends. It is also a journey deep into a lost age of sophisticated innocence in the Arab world; an age that is now nearly lost.

Winner of the 2017 Arab American Book Award and the 2017 Lambda Literary Award.

Set over the course of one night in the waiting room of a psych clinic, The Angel of History follows Yemeni-born poet Jacob as he revisits the events of his life, from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under the aegis of his wealthy father and his life as a gay Arab man in San Francisco at the height of AIDS. Hovered over by the presence of alluring, sassy Satan who taunts Jacob to remember his painful past and dour, frigid Death who urges him to forget and give up on life, Jacob is also attended to by 14 saints.

Winner of the 2016 Arab American Book Award

This short story collection about the inhabitants of a Palestinian West Bank village, Tel al-Hilou, spans generations and continents to explore ideas of memory, belonging, connection, and, ultimately, the deepest and richest meaning of home. These stories give voice to the experiences of Palestinians in the last century.

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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.

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As a blizzard blankets the northeast United States, the Zaydan family eagerly awaits the arrival of Eva, a cousin visiting from Lebanon after a long separation from the family. Emilie, the matriarch, lives in a world of voluntary silence, unable to read or write in English. Her eldest daughter, Josephine, struggles to gain her independence. Young Marie, Emilie’s granddaughter, is stifled by her conservative family and determined to study at Berkeley and to leave behind her immigrant identity.

All three are drawn to their mysterious neighbor, Loom, whose loneliness and isolation mirror their own and kindle within each woman a desire to make a connection. When Emilie takes off during the blizzard in the direction of Loom’s house and the rest of the family follows her, their act is both an escape and a reaching out.

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In the summer of 2011, just after Nour loses her father to cancer, her mother moves her and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. In order to keep her father's spirit as she adjusts to her new home, Nour tells herself their favorite story--the tale of Rawiya, a twelfth-century girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to apprentice herself to a famous mapmaker. But the Syria Nour's parents knew is changing, and it isn't long before the war reaches their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a stray shell destroys Nour's house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety--along the very route Rawiya and her mapmaker took eight hundred years before in their quest to chart the world.

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Shubeik Lubeik -- a fairy-tale rhyme that means "your wish is my command" in Arabic -- is the story of three people who are navigating a world where wishes are literally for sale. Mired as they are in bureaucracy and the familiar prejudices of our world, the wishes that are more expensive are more likely to work as intended. Three wishes sold at an unassuming kiosk in Cairo link Aziza, Nour, and Shokry, changing their perspectives as well as their lives. Aziza learned early that life can be hard, but when she loses her husband and manages to procure a wish, she finds herself fighting unreasonable regulations and inequality for the right to have -- and make -- that wish. Nour is a privileged college student who secretly struggles with depression and must decide whether to use their wish to try to "fix" this depression. And, finally, Shokry must grapple with his religious convictions as he decides how to help a friend who doesn't want to use her wish.

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A Lebanese American family in rural Pennsylvania is beset by an absurd string of tragedies. At the play's center is Joseph Douaihy, a once promising world-class runner now sidelined by injury. As Joseph confronts his deteriorating health, he is also forced to face the death of his father, an ailing uncle, and a desperate boss consumed by her own troubles.

2023 winner of the Arab American Book Award

Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land-at the cost of sacrificing all jinn. With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan's oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen, and confront a malicious killer from Loulie's past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything-her enemy, her magic, even her own past-is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality.

Winner of the 2014 Arab American Book Award.

Relegated to the status of schoolteacher and friendly neighbor after abandoning her dreams of becoming an artist, Nora advocates on behalf of a charismatic Lebanese student and is drawn into the child's family until his artist mother's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal.

Winner of the 2003 Middle East Book Award.

Nineteen poems about the Middle East and about being an Arab American living in the United States.

Fowzi, who beats everyone at dominoes, Ibtisam, who wanted to be a doctor, Abu Mahmoud, who knows every eggplant and peach in his West Bank garden, mysterious Uncle Mohammed, who moved to the mountain, a girl in a red sweater dangling a book bag, children in velvet dresses who haunt the candy bowl at the party, Baba Kamalyari, age 71, Mr. Dajani and his swans, Sitti Khadra, who never lost her peace inside. Maybe they have something to tell us.

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A humorous, beguiling, and thought-provoking collection of sixteen poems which celebrate journeys of all kinds, both real and imagined.

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This anthology reflects the 20th century renaissance in Arab American poetry.

Winner of the 2009 Arab American Book Award for Juvenile Literature.

In eighty-two poems and paragraphs, Naomi Shihab Nye alights on the essentials of our time--our loved ones, our dense air, our wars, our memories, our planet--and leaves us feeling curiously sweeter and profoundly soothed.

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This book gathers together poems from the most important contemporary Arab American poets. These poems challenge us to reconsider what it means to be American. Thirty-nine poets offer up 160 poems with an introduction about the state of Arab American poetry in the country today and an extensive list of further readings.

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Through poetry, fiction, essays, and drama, both seasoned and upcoming writers confront issues not previously addressed in Arab American writing. These unique cultural endeavors reveal the multileveled textures of the exiles of new Arab writing.

Winner of the 2018 George Ellenbogen Poetry Award.

The January Children depicts displacement and longing while also questioning accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home. The poems mythologize family histories until they break open, using them to explore aspects of Sudan's history of colonial occupation, dictatorship, and diaspora. Several of the poems speak to the late Egyptian singer Abdelhalim Hafez, who addressed many of his songs to the asmarani--an Arabic term of endearment for a brown-skinned or dark-skinned person. Elhillo explores Arabness and Africanness and the tensions generated by a hyphenated identity in those two worlds.

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Allie Abraham is a straight-A student, with good friends and a close-knit family. She's dating cute, popular, and sweet Wells Henderson-- whose father is Jack Henderson, America's most famous conservative shock jock. Allie hasn't told Wells that her family is Muslim. It's not a secret, it's just that her parents don't practice and raised her to keep her Islamic heritage to herself. As Allie witnesses ever-growing Islamophobia in her small town and across the nation, she begins to study her faith, practicing it, and facing hatred and misunderstanding for it. Can a Muslim girl in America ever truly fit in?

Middle East Book Award Honorable Mention, Youth Literature, 2013

Living in the midst of civil war in Beirut, Lebanon, Zeina and her brother face an evening of apprehension when their parents do not return from a visit to the other side of the city.

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Told in spare free verse, the book follows Viola as she survives brutality in war-torn Sudan, makes a perilous journey, lives as a refugee in Egypt, and finally reaches Portland, Maine, where her quest for freedom and security is hampered by memories of past horrors and the traditions her mother and other Sudanese adults hold dear. With unforgettable images, the author's voice sings out the story of her family's journey, and tells the universal tale of a young immigrant's struggle to build a life on the cusp of two cultures. Includes historical facts and a map of Sudan.

Winner of the 2022 Arab American Book Award for Juvenile Literature.

Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn't. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn't give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry. And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else's...she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had.

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In 2002, a year after 9/11, sixteen-year-old Muslim girl Shirin, tired of being stereotyped and degraded, refuses to let anyone get close until she meets Ocean James, the first person who really seems to want to get to know her.

Winner of the 2021 Arab American Book Award for Juvenile Literature.

The beautiful story of diversity follows a young girl named Kanzi whose most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one.

It's Nimra Sharif's first time going to public school. Nimra's nervous, but as long as she has her best friend, Jenna, by her side, she figures she can take on just about anything. Unfortunately, middle school is hard. The teachers are mean, the schedule is confusing, and Jenna starts giving hijab-wearing Nimra the cold shoulder around the other kids. Desperate to fit in and save her friendship with Jenna, Nimra accepts an unlikely invitation to join Barakah Beats, a band made up of popular eighth-grade boys. The only problem is, Nimra was taught that music isn't allowed in Islam, and she knows her parents would be disappointed in her. So she devises a plan: join the band just until she wins Jenna back, then quit before her parents find out. but Nimra's lies quickly start to unravel. And as she grows to care about her bandmates, Nimra has to decide whether to betray her new friends or herself.

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This summer's exercise in Fahmy family sisterly bonding involves a trip to Disney World--which seems like it is headed for disaster when Huda gets into a fight with a boy making fun of her hijab.

Winner of the 2020 Arab American Book Award for Juvenile Literature.

Jude never thought she'd be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. But when things in her hometown start becoming volatile, Jude and her mother are sent to live in Cincinnati with relatives. At first, everything in America seems too fast and too loud. The American movies Jude has always loved haven't quite prepared her for starting school in the US--and her new label of 'Middle Eastern,' an identity she's never known before. But this life also brings unexpected surprises--there are new friends, a whole new family, and a school musical that Jude just might try out for. Maybe America, too, is a place where Jude can be seen as she really is.

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The first day of wearing hijab is important. It means being strong. With her new backpack and light-up shoes, Faizah knows the first day of school is going to be special. It's the start of a brand-new year, and best of all, it's her older sister Asiya's first day of hijab - made of a fabric of beautiful blue, like the ocean waving to the sky. But not everyone sees hijab as beautiful, and in the face of hurtful, confusing words, Faizah will find new ways to be strong.

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Eleven-year-old Zamzam escapes Somalia's civil war, coming to Saint Cloud, Minnesota with her mother, sister, and brothers. Besides the new school, community, climate, foods, and cultural differences, Zamzam has to deal with biases and stereotyping that she isn't prepared to handle. She want to be seen as a person of value and has dreams of making a difference in this world.

Winner of the 2017 Arab American Book Award for Juvenile Literature.

Twelve-year-old Maria lives a lonely, latchkey-kid's life in the Bronx. Her Lebanese mother is working two nursing jobs to keep them afloat, and Maria keeps her worries to herself, not wanting to be a burden. Then something happens one day between home and school that changes everything. Mom whisks them to an altogether different world on Martha's Vineyard, where she's found a job on a seaside estate. While the mysterious bedridden owner―a former film director―keeps her mother busy, Maria has the freedom to explore a place she thought could only exist in the movies. Making friends with a troublesome local character, Maria finds an old sailboat that could make a marvelous clubhouse. She also stumbles upon an old map that she is sure will lead to pirate's plunder―but golden treasure may not be the most valuable thing she discovers for herself this special summer.

Winner of the 2015 Arab American Book Award for Juvenile Literature and the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature.

When Aref, a third-grader who lives in Muscat, Oman, refuses to pack his suitcase and prepare to move to Michigan, his mother asks for help from his grandfather, his Siddi, who takes Aref around the country, storing up memories he can carry with him to a new home.

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Eight-year-old Aref is excited to reunite with his father in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he will start a new school, and while Aref misses his grandfather, his Sidi, he knows that his home in Oman will always be waiting for him.

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As a refugee from Sudan to the United States, Sangoel is frustrated that no one can pronounce his name correctly until he finds a clever way to solve the problem.

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As a young girl observes that each of six women in her life wears her hijab and hair in a different way, she considers how to express her own style one day.

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Before Kahlil Gibran became the world's third-best-selling poet of all time, he was an immigrant child from Lebanon with a secret hope to bring people together despite their many differences.

Kahlil's life highlights the turn of the twentieth century, from the religious conflicts that tore apart his homeland and sent a hundred thousand Arab people to America where the wealthy clashed headlong with the poor. Throughout it all, Kahlil held on to his secret hope. How could he be both Kahlil Gibran, Arab American, and Gibran Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese boy who longed for the mountains of his homeland? Kahlil found the answer in art and poetry. More than a hundred years later, his words still fly around the world in many languages, bringing people together.

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The practice of Islam in the United States, spanning more than a century, has a contentious history that has escalated over the past decade. Debates have raged over Islam's articles of faith, especially within an American context, and its practitioners' intent. Some characterize these arguments as a clash between a white, evangelical majority and a Muslim minority, or they see it as evidence of the divide between tolerant liberals and close-minded conservatives.

Casting this conflict as a generic struggle between us and them, Nadia Marzouki argues, is a gross oversimplification of Islam's development in America. Marzouki investigates how Islam is lived, how it has changed, and how its identity has overlapped with American foreign policy toward the Muslim world. Revisiting the uproar over the construction of mosques, the perceived threat of encroaching Shar'ia law, and the overseas promotion of America's secular democratic traditions, Marzouki finds that public tensions over Islam in the United States reflect more of the West's ambivalence toward freedom of speech and political culture than the religion's purported agenda. Her unbiased portrait highlights American Islam's open outlook, which embodies and advances the core principles of the American political project.

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Opening with an overview of the rise and spread of Islam, from the seventh to the twenty-first century, this book introduces the story of Islamic history, charting the evolution of what was originally a small, localized community of believers into an international religion with over a billion adherents.

Historian Adam Silverstein also discusses the peoples--Arabs, Persians, and Turks--who shaped Islamic history, and sheds light on three representative institutions--the mosque, jihad, and the caliphate--that highlight Islam's diversity over time.

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In the minds of many Americans, Islam is synonymous with the Middle East, Muslim men with violence, and Muslim women with oppression. A clash of civilizations appears to be increasingly manifest and the war on terror seems a struggle against Islam. These are all symptoms of Islamophobia. Meanwhile, the current surge in nativist bias reveals the racism of anti-Muslim sentiment.

This book explores these anxieties through political cartoons and film--media with immediate and important impact. After providing a background on Islamic traditions and their history with America, it graphically shows how political cartoons and films reveal Americans' casual demeaning and demonizing of Muslims and Islam--a phenomenon common among both liberals and conservatives. Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Sentiment offers both fascinating insights into our culture's ways of "picturing the enemy" as Muslim, and ways of moving beyond antagonism.

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In the constant deluge of media coverage on Islam, Muslims are often portrayed as terrorists, refugees, radicals, or victims, depictions that erode human responses of concern, connection, or even a willingness to learn about Muslims. On Islam helps break this cycle with information and strategies to understand and report the modern Muslim experience.

Journalists, activists, bloggers, and scholars offer insights into how Muslims are represented in the media today and offer tips for those covering Islam in the future.

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This book examines the practice of veiling in Muslim culture, discussing its history, its religious, social, and political significance, and its importance to both conservative and progressive Muslim women as a symbol of commitment to their beliefs.

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As her family prepares for their month-long fast, Aliya secretly plans to fast, too! Aliya starts her secret fast full of determination but later in the day, the temptation proves too hard to resist. At first, Aliya is terribly disappointed in herself, but she soon learns that there are other ways that she can celebrate Ramadan.

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Hannah wants to be part of the Ramadan celebration so helps her friends and neighbors by showing kindness and generosity.

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A picture book featuring culturally rich artwork celebrates the joys, rituals, and traditions that are practiced in mosques throughout the world, and includes a glossary and information about many historical and significant mosques.

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Introduces Islam, including the history, geography, politics, and economics of the religion.

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A Muslim is a follower of the religion Islam, which is the fastest growing religion in the world. Islam is found throughout the world. What most Muslims in America have in common, aside from their faith, is that they face negative stereotypes and bias incidents from other Americans.

Gives and overview of life in the Islamic world, including an overview of the countries in which Muslims live, basic information about the beliefs shared by all Muslims, and the history of the spread of Islam throughout the world. The book also examines Islamic law and its importance to Muslims, and discusses the role of Islam in governments throughout the Islamic world.

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A young girl tells how her family celebrates the festive holiday, Girgian, which comes in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan. The special clothing, the foods, the crafts, and the greatest joy of all, the joy of giving.