Seven books to celebrate Arab American Heritage Month

April is Arab American Heritage Month! Want to explore Arab American literature but don’t know where to begin? UVA Library holds a substantial collection of Arab American fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Below are some books to get you started. Leigh Rockey, Librarian for Collections Management and Video Resources, coordinated the following list with help from her colleagues. 

“Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024)

You may be left haunted, gobsmacked, and reeling from Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, “Martyr!” If you’re a fan of Akbar’s work in another medium, you'll feel right at home with his prose suffused with poetry. The novel has a bold magical realist style much like the framing and tonal mastery of Marcus Zusak’s “The Book Thief.” Our hero, Cyrus Shams, is as frustrating as he is lovable and surrounded by a deeply compelling ensemble. “Martyr!” is a searching work that asks big questions about faith, love, and death without proselytizing or resorting to platitudes. And on top of all of that it is also very, very funny.

— Gabriel Komisar, Library Stacks Coordinator

“Of Lost Cities” by Nizar Hermes (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024)

“Of Lost Cities” is a beautifully crafted academic study of the poetry of the Maghrib city between the ninth to the 19th centuries, containing new translations and historical/political commentary of Arabic and Tamazight poetics. Nostalgia is a canonical theme of Arabic literary traditions, and Hermes’s work focuses specifically on the nostalgia and elegy of place and homeland. Hermes is a professor in UVA’s Department of Middle East and South Asia Language & Cultures.

— Audrey Parks, Shannon Library Coordinator and Weekend Manager

“Something About Living” by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (The University of Akron Press, 2024)

“Something About Living” is the winner of the 2024 National Book Award for poetry and for good reason! Its three sections employ the beauty of language against fear as they celebrate Palestinian heritage. This collection is bursting with a variety of poetic forms, demonstrating how Palestinian culture continues to persist vibrantly in the face of continued violence and constriction. Tuffaha crafts centos, sonnet crowns, golden shovels, nocturnes, ghazals, list poems, prose poems, erasure poems, and new forms celebrating her heritage while brazenly bringing to light systematic injustices. Powerful epigrams pepper her poetry, and the Notes & Acknowledgements section is not to be missed. Tuffaha’s nods to Edward Said, Ibn Zaidoun, Mahmoud Darwish, and other stars of the Arabic literary canon provide a generative recommended reading list for attentive readers. 

— Audrey Parks, Shannon Library Coordinator and Weekend Manager

“The Dream Hotel” by Laila Lalami (Pantheon, 2025)

On a flight home to Los Angeles, Sara is detained in the airport by a group of dream data monitors called the Risk Assessment Administration. She learns that she has been pulled aside because of a violent dream and is taken away to a correctional facility. While separated from her beloved husband and two young children, Sara continues to undertake small protests against the system. This opposition, alongside technology glitches, labor strikes, wildfires, and litigation errors, all contribute to her nightmares, which in turn add days to her detainment. Before her incarceration, Sara worked for the Getty Museum, and her experience of detainment in the facility is largely shaped by her work as an archivist. Lalami’s metaphor is hauntingly accurate, and her dystopian world seems a little more plausible every day. Despite “The Dream Hotel’s” expertly crafted and expanding dread, Sara’s story has a happy ending. 

— Audrey Parks, Shannon Library Coordinator and Weekend Manager

“[...]” by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions, 2024)

In his sixth collection of poems, Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah calls attention to the systematic erasure and excision of Palestinian voices. Written from October to December 2023, “[…]” asks its readers to consider the potential and limitations of language in the face of unspeakable violence and grapples with the experiences of the Palestinian diaspora. “[…]” was awarded the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize and recognized as a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry.

— Jacquelyn Kim, Exhibitions Coordinator

“Dearborn” by Ghassan Zeineddine (Tin House, 2023)

A friend of a friend hides thousands of dollars in cash in frozen chickens. A man wearing a Speedo emblazoned with the cedars of Lebanon might try to sell you a pin-up calendar of himself for $150. Your neighborhood halal butcher secretly walks around Detroit dressed as a woman. Through these stories and seven more concerning the lives of residents of Dearborn, Michigan, Ghassan Zeineddine tells the tale of an entire diaspora. Zeineddine’s characters participate in the American Dream, and many find success and happiness that last over generations. Most of them experience the usual trouble in life, albeit in tragic, hilarious, uniquely Dearborn-esque ways. The troubles and worries of Arab Americans in Dearborn might be specific to them, by their truths are universal.

— Leigh Rockey, Librarian for Collections Management and Video Resources

“Shubeik Lubeik” by Deena Mohamed (Pantheon, 2022)

In “Shubeik Lubeik,” a graphic novel of remarkable images and stories by Deena Mohamed, we live in a world where unused wishes, the kind kept in bottles and lamps, are marketable commodities. As the owner of an unused wish, you can’t wish for just anything — certain types of wishes, like superhero powers, are criminalized in many countries. Wishes are either manufactured or mined and come in varying degrees of quality. A weak third-class wish might go awry and instead of more attractive ears, you might wind up looking like an elephant. Expensive first-class wishes are so coveted that rich people and governments often hoard them. Sometimes first-class wishes do become available for anyone to buy, and this novel recounts the uplifting, frustrating, cruel, joyful, and just plain human consequences of wishing for a better life.

— Leigh Rockey, Librarian for Collections Management and Video Resources