Looking for a read that you will not want to put down? These novels are rich in history and personal narratives that will have you invested in their meanings and value. To dive into some of the lives of Arab Americans, let us take a look at 5 memoirs and biographies that you will not be able to put down.
I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib
I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib tells her story of growing up as an immigrant teenager in the U.S. while struggling to balance her cultural identities.
Being the daughter of immigrants who wanted a better life for their family, Gharib tells her story of trying to succeed for her parents, learning to code-switch between her Filipino and Egyptian customs while also trying to adapt to white culture, and dealing with her crush on skater boys. This memoir is relatable and intimate in ways that reveal the best and worst parts of growing up while trying to figure out who you want to be.
When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History by Massoud Hamid
When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History by Massoud Hamid tells his family’s story to remember the time before politics vandalized cultural identity.
Recounting his grandparents’ lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles, this journalist documents postcolonial Arab American identity and the changes it has gone through because of history and politics attempting to reshape their narrative. Hamid tackles Zionism and the contemporary understanding of what makes our identities and cultures.
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami is a personal work rooted in history, politics, and literature.
Using her story of being a Moroccan immigrant to a U.S. citizen, Lalami goes into the rights, liberties, and protections that make U.S. citizenship. Her novel explores white supremacy and its ability to withstand generations along with POC cultures part in American culture. Lalami offers an essential argument for how U.S. citizenship is portrayed and what it means to be a conditional citizen in this country.
The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek
The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek tells her story of living in a dictatorship that took her grandmother’s apartment and led to her parent’s decision to make it in the U.S.
This memoir tells the stories of Syrians, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds who lived in the Tahaan building during the political shift in their country. She learns the coded language in existence with dictatorships while expressing her personal fears for Syria’s future as she tries to build back her family’s home. This light on Syrian history, society, and politics will broaden readers’ understanding of what it is like to live in a dictatorship while examining the signs of our own political landscapes.
Sex and Lies: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World by Leila Slimani
Sex and Lies: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World by Leila Slimani stems from her promotion for her novel Adèle where women came up to her and revealed the restrictions and secrecy behind their own sex lives.
With vivid testimonies and considerate commentary, Slimani reveals the constraints women face in Morocco with adultery, abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, and sex outside of marriage being punishable by law. These intimate stories showcase the minimal decisions women are supposed to make between being virgins or wives to provide a case for the sexual revolution happening in the Arab world.
We must take in history as knowing history can help prevent it from repeating itself, especially in finding signs of danger in countries and holding on to the communities we have. I hope these recommendations were insightful and helped expand your world perspectives and history.
Want to find more Arab American authors? Click here.
What to find more POC voices in books? Check out our Insightful Native American Reads to Widen Your Horizon bookshelf on Bookshop.org.
