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 24, 2024
LINCC (Libraries in Clackamas County)Milwaukie Ledding Library
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
The wrong end of the telescope
Alameddine, Rabih
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION By National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on...
Salt houses
Alyan, Hala
Paper Book
Indie Next PickReceived two starred reviewsSMLOn the eve of her daughter's wedding, Salma reads Alia's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children, which will come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967. Lyrical and...
You Exist Too Much A Novel
Arafat, Zaina.
Paper Book
A "provocative and seductive debut" of desire and doubleness that follows the life of a young Palestinian American woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities as she endeavors to lead an authentic life (O, The Oprah Magazine). On a hot day in Bethlehem,...
Bikur ha-Tizmoret The band's visit
Bleiberg, Ehud.
DVD
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.
It won't always be like this : a graphic memoir
Gharib, Malaka
Paper Book
An intimate graphic memoir about an American girl growing up with her Egyptian father's new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country-from the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream. "What a joy it is to read Malaka...
The thirty names of night : a novel
Joukhadar, Zeyn
Audiobook
The hundred years' war on Palestine : a history of settler colonialism and resistance, 1917-2017
Khalidi, Rashid
Paper Book
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish...
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 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...
Man o' war
McCarthy, Cory
Paper Book
A Stonewall Honor Book An achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age novel about an Arab American trans teen fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town. Man o' wars are not jellyfish, and River McIntyre is not happy....
Palestine
Sacco, Joe.
Joe Sacco's breakthrough work of graphic journalism -- a now-established genre almost single handedly invented by Sacco -- won the American Book Award upon its initial release in 1996, and has remained a perennial, essential work for understanding the Palestinian Israeli conflict in the Middle East....

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.