April 15, 2025 – April is National Arab American Heritage Month, which honors the history and heritage of 3.5 million Arab Americans. Dive into the month by checking out these novels, memoirs, and more, by and about Arab Americans.
Browse the books below, and click on their covers to put them on hold in our catalog. Book descriptions are excerpted from publisher information.
Fiction
"Martyr!" by Kaveh Akbar (2024)
In this acclaimed novel by Iowa City-based author Kaveh Akbar, Cyrus Sham's is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past – toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
"Behind You is the Sea" by Susan Muaddi Darraj (2024)
A 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 – shows lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion.
"Evil Eye" by Etaf Rum (2023)
Yara is in trouble at work for fighting back after facing racism. Her Palestinian mother says it's due to a family curse. Yara doesn't believe in superstitions, but could it be that the unresolved past does affect us now?
"The Dream Hotel" by Laila Lalami (2025)
A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance. Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
History
"Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest" by Edward E. Curtis, IV (2022)
This book rejects the stereotype of the Midwest as bleached-out Christian country. It unearths a surprising and intimate history of the first two generations of Syrian Muslims in the Midwest who, in spite of discrimination, created a life that was Arab, American, and Muslim all at the same time.
Poetry
"Girls that Never Die: Poems" by Safia Elhillo (2022)
Safia Elhillo reinvents the epic to explore Muslim girlhood and shame, the dangers of being a woman, and the myriad violences enacted and imagined against women's bodies. Drawing from her own life and family histories, as well as cultural myths and news stories about honor killings and genital mutilation, she interlaces the everyday traumas of growing up a girl under patriarchy with magical realist imaginings of rebellion, autonomy, and power. Elhillo writes a new world: women escape their stonings by birds that carry the rocks away; slain girls grow into two, like the hydra of lore, sprouting too numerous to ever be eradicated; circles of women are deemed holy, protected. Ultimately, Girls That Never Die is about wrestling ourselves from the threats of violence that constrain our lives, and instead looking to freedom and questioning: [what if i will not die] [what will govern me then].
Memoir
"Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark" by Sarafina El-badry Nance (2023)
As a child, Sarafina El-Badry Nance spent nearly every evening with her father gazing up at the flickering stars and pondering what secrets the night sky held. The daughter of an American father and Egyptian mother who both pushed her toward academic excellence, Sarafina dreamed of becoming an astronomer and untangling the mysteries of the stars overhead. But it wasn’t long before she was told, both explicitly and implicitly, that girls just weren’t cut out for math and science.
In Starstruck, Sarafina invites us to consider the cosmos through fascinating science lessons to open each chapter. But she also traces more earthbound obstacles — of misogyny and racism, abuse and intergenerational trauma, anxiety and self-doubt, cancer diagnoses and recovery — she faced along the way. As her career and passion for space brought her from UT Austin to UC Berkeley, and even to a Mars astronaut simulation in Hawai’i, Sarafina learned how to survive — and ultimately thrive — in a space that was seldom welcoming to women, and especially not to women of color.
"Love is an Ex-Country: A Memoir" by Randa Jarrar (2022)
Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat woman. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America. 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.
"Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir" by Lamya H (2023)
Fourteen years old and growing up in the Middle East, Lamya is an overachiever and a class clown, qualities that help her hide in plain sight when she realizes she has a crush on her teacher – her female teacher. She's also fourteen when she reads a passage in Quran class about Maryam, known as the Virgin Mary in the Christian Bible, that changes everything. Lamya learns that Maryam was untempted by an angelically handsome man, and later, when told she is pregnant, insists no man has touched her. Could Maryam be ... like Lamya? Spanning childhood to an elite college in the US and early adult life in New York City, each essay places Lamya's struggles and triumphs in the context of some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the Pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing strength from the faith and hope of Nuh building his ark, begins to build a life of her own – all the while discovering that her identity as a queer, immigrant devout Muslim is, in fact, the answer to her quest for safety and belonging.
Cookbooks
"Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora" by Reem Assil (2022)
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 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. With a section specializing in breads of the Arab bakery, plus recipes for favorites such as Salatet Fattoush, Falafel Mahshi, Mujaddarra, and Hummus Bil Awarma, Arabiyya showcases the origins and evolution of Arab cuisine and opens up a whole new world of flavor.
"Kitchen Arabic: How my Family Came to America and the Recipes we Brought with Us" by Joseph Geha (2023)
This cookbook illustrates Joseph Geha's early years in America and his family's struggle to learn the language and ways of a new world. A compilation of family recipes and of the stories that came with them, it deftly blends culture with cuisine. In her kitchen, Geha's mother took special pride in the Arabic dishes she cooked, cherishing that aspect of her heritage that, unlike language, has changed very little over time and distance. With this book, Geha shares how the food of his heritage sustained his family throughout that cultural journey, speaking to them – in a language that needs no translation – of joy and comfort and love