Arab American Heritage Month - Books for Adults

National Arab American Heritage Month is a month-long celebration of Arab culture and the contributions of Arab Americans in the United States.

Arab Americans are people who came from or whose ancestors came from one of twenty-two Arab nations in northern Africa or the Middle East. An Arab nation is one where people speak the Arabic language. There are twenty-two Arab nations, and the largest by population include Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. Other Arab nations include Bahrain, the Comoro Islands, Djibouti, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

In 2021, the world’s Arab population was estimated to be about 436 million. Oregon’s Arab American community is one of the fastest growing in the U.S. with more than 31,000 Arab Americans living in Oregon.

To celebrate Arab American Heritage Month, check out one of these recommended books or movies below!

Updated April 2, 2026
LINCC (Libraries in Clackamas County) Milwaukie Ledding Library
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Theeb
Abu Nowar, Naji
Crescent
Abu-Jaber, Diana
Paper Book
Praised by critics for her first novel, "Arabian Jazz, " Diana Abu-Jaber now weaves with spellbinding magic a multidimensional love story set in the Arab-American community of Los Angeles.
The language of Baklava
Abu-Jaber, Diana.
Paper Book
"From the acclaimed author of Crescent, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook. Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob...
Against the loveless world : a novel
Abulhawa, Susan
Paper Book
2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist "Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds...
Our riches
Adimi, Kaouther
Paper Book
Our Riches celebrates quixotic devotion and the love of books in the person of Edmond Charlot, who at the age of twenty founded Les Vraies Richesses (Our True Wealth), the famous Algerian bookstore/publishing house/lending library. He more than fulfilled its motto "by the young, for the young,"...
An unnecessary woman
Alameddine, Rabih
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A happily misanthropic Middle East divorcee finds refuge in books in a "beautiful and absorbing" novel of late-life crisis (The New York Times). Aaliya is a divorced, childless, and reclusively cranky translator in Beirut nurturing...
The wrong end of the telescope
Alameddine, Rabih
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION By National Book Award winner for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) and National Book Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's...
The hakawati
Alameddine, Rabih
Paper Book
In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East....
Bitter orange tree : a novel
Alharthi, Jokha
Paper Book
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award A TIME Best Book of the Year A New Yorker Best Book of the Year An extraordinary novel from a Man Booker International Prize-winning author that follows one young Omani woman as she builds a life for herself in...
The moon that turns you back
Alyan, Hala
Paper Book
From the author of The Arsonists' City and The Twenty-Ninth Year, a new collection of poetry that traces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family-past, present, future-in the face of displacement and war. A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection--a multiplicity of...
Salt houses
Alyan, Hala
Paper Book
 Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses follows three generations of a Palestinian family and asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can't go home again. Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award On the eve...
Courting Samira : a novel
Awad, Amal
Paper Book
Set in Sydney, Australia, Courting Samira is a charming, big-hearted rom-com about a twenty-seven-year-old Palestinian woman who finds herself in an unexpected love triangle--a sparkling ode to meddling best friends, traditional courtship, The Princess Bride, and, of course, the possibility of...
The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
Aziza, Sarah
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PALESTINE BOOK AWARD A brush with death. An ancestral haunting. A century of family secrets. Sarah Aziza's searing, genre-bending memoir traces three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to the Midwest to New York City--and back "You were...
Bikur ha-Tizmoret The band's visit
Bleiberg, Ehud.
Paper Book
An Egyptian orchestra arrives in Israel to play an important cultural event only to find themselves in the wrong town, where they learn about themselves and each other as they spend the night interacting with the locals.
Behind you is the sea : a novel
Darraj, Susan Muaddi
Paper Book
2025 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST * ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD FINALIST Washington Post Notable Works of Fiction from 2024 * Booklist Top 10 Debut Novels of 2024 * Ms. Magazine Favorite Books of the Year 2024 * Elle.com The Best...
Almond blossoms and beyond
Darwīsh, Maḥmūd
Paper Book
The first English translation of recent poetry by the late Mahmoud Darwish, the most important Palestinian contemporary poet. Almond Blossoms and Beyond is one of the last collections of poetry that Mahmoud Darwish left to the world. Composed of brief lyric poems and the magnificent sustained Exile...
Chronicle of a last summer : a novel of Egypt
El Rashidi, Yasmine
Paper Book
A young Egyptian woman recounts her personal and political coming of age in this brilliant debut novel. Cairo, 1984. A blisteringly hot summer. A young girl in a sprawling family house. Her days pass quietly: listening to a mother's phone conversations, looking at the Nile...
Huda F are you?
Fahmy, Huda
Paper Book
From the creator of Yes, I'm Hot In This, this cheeky, hilarious, and honest graphic novel asks the question everyone has to figure out for themselves- Who are you? A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the Century Huda and her family just moved to...
Our women on the ground : essays by Arab women reporting from the Arab world
Hankir, Zahra
Paper Book
Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it's like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection, with a foreword by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour "A stirring, provocative and well-made new anthology . ....
The map of salt and stars
Joukhadar, Jennifer Zeynab
Paper Book
"This imaginative but very real look into war-torn Syria is a must." -Booklist (starred review) This rich, moving, and lyrical debut novel is to Syria what The Kite Runner was to Afghanistan; the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart--a modern-day...
The thirty names of night : a novel
Joukhadar, Zeyn
Paper Book
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award--Barbara Gittings Literature Award Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric...
The hundred years' war on Palestine : a history of settler colonialism and resistance, 1917-2017
Khalidi, Rashid
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller Palestine Book Award Winner Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize Named the Best Book of 2020 by Foreign Affairs A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians...
Gate of the Sun
Khoury, Elias
Paper Book
ANew York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year One ofKansas City Star's 100 Noteworthy Books of the Year ABoldtypeNotable Book of the Year AChristian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year ASan...
Conditional citizens : on belonging in America
Lalami, Laila
Paper Book
A New York Times Editors' Choice * Best Book of the Year: Time, NPR, Bookpage, L.A. Times What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize­­-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely...
The dream hotel : a novel
Lalami, Laila
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ● READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY ● From Laila Lalami--the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a "maestra of literary fiction" (NPR)--comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman's fight for freedom, set in...
The other Americans
Lalami, Laila
Paper Book
"From the Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of The Moor's Account--a timely and powerful new novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant that is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, all of it informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture. Nora Guerraoui...
Love across borders : passports, papers, and romance in a divided world
Lekas Miller, Anna
Paper Book
One of The Boston Globe's Best Books of 2023 * "Powerful and unforgettable" --Qian Julie Wang, author of the New York Times bestseller, Beautiful Country We are told that love conquers all, but what happens when you don't have...
The return : fathers, sons, and the land in between
Matar, Hisham
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * The acclaimed memoir about fathers and sons, a legacy of loss, and, ultimately, healing--one of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle...
The Cairo trilogy
Maḥfūẓ, Najīb
Paper Book
Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt--Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street--together for the first time in one beautiful hardcover volume. The masterwork of the Nobel Prize-winning author, the three novels...
Shubeik lubeik
Muh?ammad, Di?na?
Paper Book
* Winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation *Eisner Award Nominee * Hugo Award Nominee A brilliantly original debut graphic novel that imagines a fantastical alternate Cairo where wishes really do come true. Shubeik Lubeik--a fairy tale rhyme that means...
Cities of salt : a novel
Munīf, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān
Paper Book
Banned in Saudia Arabia, this is a blistering look at Arab and American hypocrisy following the discovery of oil in a poor oasis community.
The Slightest Green
Mustafah, Sahar
Paper Book
American-born nurse Intisar has strived to create a life for herself in Chicago. She was raised by her mother after her father returned to Palestine when she was 9, completely disappearing from her life. Now, 20 years later, she receives an urgent request from him. He is dying and asks her to come...
If an Egyptian cannot speak English : a novel
Naga, Noor
Paper Book
Winner of the 2022 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Winner of the 2023 Arab American Book Award for FictionShortlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Shortlisted for the 2022 VCU Cabell First Novelist...
Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman
Nuseibeh, N. S.
Paper Book
A Palestinian Woman's dazzling exploration of heritage, gender and the idea of home. I may not be brave enough, but somewhere deep inside of me there is, perhaps, the kernel of someone who is. That brave someone was the legendary Nusayba bint Ka'ab al...
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Pappé, Ilan
Paper Book
Since the Holocaust, it has been almost impossible to hide large-scale crimes against humanity. In our communicative world, few modern catastrophes are concealed from the public eye. And yet, Ilan Pappe unveils, one such crime has been erased from the global public memory: the ethnic cleansing...
Palestine
Sacco, Joe.
Paper Book
A single volume collection of the landmark novel by Joe Sacco, author of Safe In Goradze. Palestine was his first major comic work of political and historical non-fiction, and was based on several months research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s, where he...
The insult
Sehnaoui, Antoun
DVD
In Beirut, a Christian auto mechanic (Adel Karam) and a Palestinian refugee working as a construction foreman (Kamel El Basha) get into an argument that turns violent. Their feud leads to a court case that soon threatens to open up fissures within Lebanon. Directed by Ziad Doueiri. ~ Jack Rodgers,...
Strangers in the house : coming of age in occupied Palestine
Shehadeh, Raja
Paper Book
In 1948, Raja Shehadehs Palestinian family was one of many driven from their homes when Israel defeated the Arab armies arrayed against it. Shehadehs early childhood in the rural hills of the West Bank was marked by his familys sense of loss and impermanence, vividly evoked by the distant glittering...
The map of love
Soueif, Ahdaf.
Paper Book
Booker Prize Finalist Here is an extraordinary cross-cultural love story that unfurls across Egypt, England, and the United States over the course of a century. Isabel Parkman, a divorced American journalist, has fallen in love with a gifted and difficult Egyptian-American...
Boustany : a celebration of vegetables from my Palestine
Tamimi, Sami
Paper Book
Celebrate the diverse cuisine of Palestine with more than 100 plant-based and vegetarian recipes for festive meals, breads, desserts, and more, from the award-winning co-author of Jerusalem, Falastin and co-founder of Ottolenghi. "With recipes rooted in nostalgia and...
In Syria [DVD] = Fī Sūriyā
Van Leeuw, Philippe
DVD
The food of Morocco
Wolfert, Paula.
Paper Book
Winner of the James Beard Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award "A cookbook by Paula Wolfert is cause for celebration. Ms. Wolfert may be America's most knowledgeable food person and her books are full of insight, passion and brilliance." --Anthony Dias Blue, CBS Radio, NY<...

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