A Reading List for Arab American Heritage Month
The New York Public Library celebrates Arab American Heritage Month throughout April with events and programs, recommended reading, research collection highlights, and a wide array of resources for all ages.
Explore a sample of works for adults and teens—including fiction, poetry, memoir, and more—by and about people of Arab descent highlighting diverse experiences and perspectives.
Adult
Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora
by Reem Assil
Arabiyya celebrates the alluring aromas and flavors of Arab food and the welcoming spirit with which they are shared. Written from her point of view as an Arab in the diaspora, Reem takes readers on a journey through her Palestinian and Syrian roots, showing how her heritage has inspired her recipes for flatbreads, dips, snacks, platters to share, and more.
Conditional Citizens
by Laila Lalami
Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point to explore the rights, liberties, and protections traditionally associated with American citizenship.
Girls That Never Die: Poems
by Safia Elhillio
Drawing from her own life and family histories, as well as cultural myths and news stories about honor killings and genital mutilation, Elhillio interlaces the everyday traumas of growing up a girl under patriarchy with magical realist imaginings of rebellion, autonomy, and power.
The Jasad Heir
by Sara Hashem
Sylvia lived the first ten years of her life as the carefree heir to a magical kingdom until enemies turned Jasad into the Scorched Lands. After surviving five years of torturous training meant to mold her into a rebel leader, she escaped, seeking a simple life. Marked for death by her birthright and the magic she cannot wield, Sylvia is discovered and forced into a dangerous political game by Arin, heir to the man who destroyed her family.
Love is an Ex-Country
by Randa Jarrar
Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat woman. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this provocative memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America.
The Moon That Turns You Back
by Hala Alyan
A new collection of poetry that traces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family-past, present, future-in, the face of displacement and war.
Stardust Thief
by Chelsea Abdullah
A hunter and seller of illegal magic, Loulie al-Nazari, after saving the life of a cowardly prince, is blackmailed into finding an ancient lamp, drawing her into a world where nothing is what it seems and where she must decide who she will become in this new reality.
Surge
by Etel Adnan
The New York Times described this poetry collection as the "meditative heir to Nietzsche's aphorisms, Rilke's Book of Hours, and the verses of Sufi mysticism."
The Thirty Names of Night
by Zeyn Joukhadar
Follows three generations of Syrian Americans linked by a mysterious bird species.
Teens
All-American Muslim Girl
by Nadine Jolie Courtney
16-year-old Allie, aged seven when she knew her family was different and feared, struggles to claim her Muslim and Arabic heritage while finding her place as an American teenager.
Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card
by Sara Saedi
In San Jose, California, in the 1990s, teenage Sara keeps a diary of life as an Iranian American and her discovery that she and her family entered as undocumented immigrants.
Huda F Are You?
By Huda Fahmy
Huda F. is starting high school in a new town and needs to figure out where she fits.
Ms. Marvel vol 1, Destined
by Saladin Ahmed
Ms. Marvel is back—and she's magnificent! But there's no such thing as business as usual in Jersey City. Aliens are wreaking havoc in Kamala's corner of the world, and they seem weirdly interested in Ms. Marvel...and her family!
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners
by Naomi Shihab Nye
In her latest poetry collection, Nye invokes the voices and spirits of countless inspirational figures, past and present. From Bruce Springsteen and Langston Hughes to Yehuda Amichai and Vera B. Williams to her grandfather and a barber in Honolulu, Nye has utilized poetry as an equalizer and shows, without saying, that raised, wise, creative voices are powerful and vital.
We Hunt the Flame
by Hafsah Faisal
In a world inspired by ancient Arabia, 17-year-old huntress Zafira must disguise herself as a man to seek a lost artifact that could return magic to her cursed world.
In addition to works in our circulating collections, Hiba Abid, Curator for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at The New York Public Library has put together the LibGuide, Early Arab American Collections, for patrons to find information and resources about Arab American history available at NYPL with a focus on the early Arabic-speaking community in New York City.