Bk Theme: Family
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Habibi
An award-winning novel about identity, family, and friendship from renowned writer and editor Naomi Shihab Nye.The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine.…
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The Turtle of Michigan
The stand-alone companion to National Book Award Finalist and beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s The Turtle of Oman . The Turtle of Michigan is a deft and accessible novel that follows a young boy named Aref as he travels from Muscat, Oman, to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and adjusts to a new life and a new…
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When We Were Arabs
The stunning debut of a brilliant nonfiction writer whose vivid account of his grandparents’ lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles reclaims his family’s Jewish Arab identity.There was a time when being an “Arab” didn’t mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile…
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The Other Americans
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,…
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Eleven Words for Love: A Journey Through Arabic Expressions of Love
A lyrical narrative of a Palestinian family in exile explores universal bonds of family, loyalty, and friendship through the lens of eleven Arabic expressions for love. A family has fled their homeland in search of safety in another country, carrying a single suitcase. As their journey unfolds, the oldest child reflects on the special contents…
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The Magic My Body Becomes
Winner, 2017 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize In the magic my body becomes, Jess Rizkallah seeks a vernacular for the inescapable middle ground of being Arab American–a space that she finds, at times, to be too Arab for America and too American for her Lebanese elders. These poems freely assert gender, sexuality, and religious beliefs while at…
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The Blue Between Sky and Water
In the small Palestinian farming village of Beit Daras, the women of the Baraka family inspire awe. Nazmiyeh is brazen and fiercely protective of her clairvoyant little sister, Mariam, with her mismatched eyes, and of their mother, Um Mahmoud, known for the fearsome djinn that sometimes possesses her. When the family is forced by the…
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The Three Lucys
A young Lebanese boy must learn to cope with loss and hope for a peaceful future after losing one of his beloved cats when his village comes under attack. Luli likes to sit in the shade of an olive tree with his beloved cats: Lucy the Fat, Lucy the Skinny, and Lucy Lucy. But when…
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The Bastard of Istanbul
A “vivid and entertaining” (Chicago Tribune) tale about the tangled history of two families, from the author of The Forty Rules of Love and The Architect’s ApprenticeZesty, imaginative . . . a Turkish version of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. –USA Today As an Armenian American living in San Francisco, Armanoush feels like part of her identity is missing and…
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Silverworld
Fall under the spell of this fantasy-adventure story about a Lebanese-American girl who finds the courage to save her grandmother.Sitti, Sami’s Lebanese grandmother, has been ill for a while, slipping from reality and speaking in a language only Sami can understand. Her family thinks Sitti belongs in a nursing home, but Sami doesn’t believe she’s…