Arab American Heritage Month

Set against the backdrop of the early American presence in Iran under the Shah, and the burgeoning years of Kuwait's early oil boom, Dancing into the Light is Kathryn Abdul-Baki's memoir of growing up within both the expatriate Western communities and the larger Middle Eastern society of Kuwait and Jerusalem. Hers is a story of belonging to two vastly different cultures and finding her place within both, and the search to find the inherent harmony in worlds at odds with each other. She is already caught in both the joys of and the struggle to be both Arab and American, yet not fully either, when her young life of promise is disrupted by tragedy. But instead of derailing her life, her mother's death opens the door to deeper love and support from other places within Kathryn's family. Dancing into the Light is a story of love, loss, and renewal, and of overcoming devastating early trauma through music, dancing, and the love and devotion of strong American and Arab women.

This moving, eye-opening memoir of an innocent man detained at Guantánamo Bay for fifteen years tells a story of humanity in the unlikeliest of places and an unprecedented look at life at Guantánamo. At the age of 18, Mansoor Adayfi left his home in Yemen for a cultural mission to Afghanistan. He never returned. Kidnapped by warlords and then sold to the US after 9/11, he was disappeared to Guantánamo Bay, where he spent the next 14 years as Detainee #441. Don't Forget Us Here tells two coming-of-age stories in parallel: a makeshift island outpost becoming the world's most notorious prison and an innocent young man emerging from its darkness. Arriving as a stubborn teenager, Mansoor survived the camp's infamous interrogation program and became a feared and hardened resistance fighter leading prison riots and hunger strikes. With time though, he grew into the man nicknamed "Smiley Troublemaker": a student, writer, advocate, and historian. While at Guantánamo, he wrote a series of manuscripts he sent as letters to his attorneys, which he then transformed into this vital chronicle, in collaboration with award-winning writer Antonio Aiello. With unexpected warmth and empathy, Mansoor unwinds a narrative of fighting for hope and survival in unimaginable circumstances, illuminating the limitlessness of the human spirit. And through his own story, he also tells Guantánamo's story, offering an unprecedented window into one of the most secretive places on earth and the people--detainees and guards alike--who lived there with him.   Twenty years after 9/11, Guantánamo remains open, and at a moment of due reckoning, Mansoor Adayfi helps us understand what actually happened there--both the horror and the beauty--a stunning record of an experience we cannot afford to forget.

I Was Their American Dream is at once a coming-of-age story and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib'striumphant graphic memoir bringsto life her teenage antics and illuminatesearnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised. Malaka'sstory is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream.

The daughter of a prominent Palestinian father and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Majla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. But while her father and brother shared a passion for debate about the politics of the Middle East and her mother held on deeply to her Lebanese roots, Said was satisfied to be her father's darling daughter, content with her life on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her home life was rich and embracing, but outside her apartment she felt entirely unsure about who she was supposed to be, and often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her. She may have been born a Palestinian Lebanese American, but in her own mind she grew up first as a WASP (baptized Episcopalian in Boston; attending Chapin, the wealthy Upper East Side girls' school), then as a teenage Jew, essentially denying her true roots, even to herself, until well into adulthood. The fact that her father was Edward Said - the famous intellectual, founding father of postcolonial thought, and outspoken advocate for the political and human rights of the Palestinian people - only made things more complicated. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with the countries they had come from, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and confirmity, where she felt her family was a cultural island all its own, she sought comfort by fitting in with ther peers, until, ultimately, the psychological toll of her self-hatred began to threaten her health. As she grew older, and made increased visits to Palestine and Beirut, Said's worldview shifted. The attacks on the World Trade Center, and some of the ways in which Americans responded, finally made it impossible for her to continue to pick and choose her identity, and allowed her to see herself and her passions more clearly. In Looking for Palestine, she shares the journey to this understanding and the experience of growing up in an immigrant family and learning to embrace its cultures.

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 in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism. Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, Oscar's son, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun whom Oscar raised in Los Angeles, finds his voice by telling his family's story. To reclaim a worldly, nuanced Arab identity is, for Hayoun, part of the larger project to recall a time before ethnic identity was mangled for political ends. It is also a journey deep into a lost age of sophisticated innocence in the Arab world; an age that is now nearly lost. When We Were Arabs showcases the gorgeous prose of the Eppy Award-winning writer Massoud Hayoun, bringing the worlds of his grandparents alive, vividly shattering our contemporary understanding of what makes an Arab, what makes a Jew, and how we draw the lines over which we do battle.