Books for Arab American Heritage Month

By Coll Rowe | March 1 2024 | LiteratureSociologyArab American

In honor of Arab American Heritage Month in April, we are sharing books by Arab and Arab American authors that share their culture, history, and personal lives.

What Strange Paradise
What Strange Paradise
A novel
Omar El Akkad
9781984899248
From the widely acclaimed, author of American War—a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving novel that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child.
$18.00 US
Jun 07, 2022
Paperback
256 Pages
Vintage
Martyr!
Martyr!
A novel
Kaveh Akbar
9780593537619

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

$28.00 US
Jan 23, 2024
Hardcover
352 Pages
Knopf
It Won't Always Be Like This
It Won't Always Be Like This
A Graphic Memoir
Malaka Gharib
9781984860293
An intimate graphic memoir about an American girl growing up with her Egyptian father’s new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country—from the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream.
$19.99 US
Sep 20, 2022
Paperback
224 Pages
Ten Speed Graphic
Starstruck
Starstruck
A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark
Sarafina El-Badry Nance
9780593186794
In a beautifully written and science-packed debut memoir, Egyptian-American astrophysicist Sarafina Nance shares her personal story of overcoming sexism, racism, and adversity, and appreciating the most important moments and people in her life by focusing on her lifelong love of the stars.
$29.00 US
Jun 06, 2023
Hardcover
336 Pages
Dutton
Love Is an Ex-Country
Love Is an Ex-Country
A Memoir
Randa Jarrar
9781646221226

Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat woman. 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).

$16.95 US
Apr 18, 2023
Paperback
240 Pages
Catapult
The Other Americans
The Other Americans
A Novel
Laila Lalami
9780525436034

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.

$17.00 US
Mar 17, 2020
Paperback
320 Pages
Vintage
You Exist Too Much
You Exist Too Much
A Novel
Zaina Arafat
9781646220595
A novel of desire and doubleness that follows the life of a young Palestinian American woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities as she tries to lead an authentic life
$16.95 US
Jun 08, 2021
Paperback
272 Pages
Catapult
The Immortals of Tehran
The Immortals of Tehran
Ali Araghi
9781612199078
Exploring the brutality of history while conjuring the astonishment of magical realism, The Immortals of Tehran is a novel about the incantatory power of words and the revolutionary sparks of love, family, and poetry–set against the indifferent, relentless march of time.
Exploring the brutality of history while conjuring the astonishment of magical realism, The Immortals of Tehran is a novel about the incantatory power of words and the revolutionary sparks of love, family, and poetry–set against the indifferent, relentless march of time.

 

$17.99 US
Apr 13, 2021
Paperback
400 Pages
Melville House
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