Arab American Heritage Month 2026: Adults

As a financial crisis looms, Jamal "Jack" Shaban is trying to save his neighbors from bankruptcy. But who is Jack, really? For his flight attendant colleagues, he's an object of desire, even love, particularly for his sweetly bawdy Wisconsinite best friend, Birdy. Birdy knows nothing about Dimra, Jack's traditional Muslim wife, with whom Jack is desperate to have a child. Nor does Dimra know about Jack's attraction to Marcia: an angry single mom new...

"In his final years, the Egyptian master storyteller and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz drew on his dreams, combining the mystery of what we experience in the night with the deep wells of his narrative art. These last dreams, stunning poetic vignettes--now brought beautifully into English for the first time by the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar--appear here with dreamlike photographs by the famous American photographer Diana Matar, which both mysteriously...

"The story of a translator released from prison who wants little more than to resume his work, Mohamed Kheir's latest is a tale of returning to a home you do not recognize, a place where the forces of capital, nostalgia, and trauma violently collide"-- Provided by publisher.

"Mia Almas has a secret. By day, she works as a media fact checker, and by night, she takes to the stages of New York City comedy clubs. She holds herself back in a lot of ways, until Phaedra, her stylish new neighbor, inspires Mia to take a few risks. As Mia pursues a forbidden romance with her boss, her standup gets better and bolder, leading to a surprise spotlight that exposes her secret gig. Worried that her rebellious act could mean big consequences...

"Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine's debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more. In Dearborn, a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions...

"A collection of Palestinian poetry originally published in 1970 that resonates with liberation and civil rights struggles around the world. This updated edition for the current generation of activists features new poems translated by Edmund Ghareeb, an internationally recognized Lebanese-American scholar, and a new foreword by Dr. Greg Thomas. In 1971, in the wake of George Jackson's killing by San Quentin prison guards, a poem entitled "Enemy of...

"After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman -- the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn -- to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance. As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling -- a...

"Cairo, 1963: four years before her lone novel is finally published, the writer Enayat al-Zayyat takes her own life at age 27. For the next three decades, it's as if Enayat never existed at all. Years, later, when celebrated Egyptian poet Iman Mersal stumbles upon Enayat's long-forgotten Love and Silence in a Cairo book stall, she embarks on a journey of reflection and rediscovery that leads her ever closer to the world and work of Enayat al-Zayyat"...

Disease Knows No Politics is the memoir of Dr. Elias Zerhouni, former NIH director and presidential envoy, chronicling his journey from war-torn Algeria to the highest levels of American science and government. The book highlights his commitment to keeping science and public health free from political influence, detailing his leadership during key national debates and his role in shaping biomedical research. It serves as both a tribute to the American...