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Arab American Heritage Month

April is Arab American Heritage Month, celebrating the contributions of Arab peoples to the history, traditions and cultures of the United States. Here are a few of the books we are reading and recommending:

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher—her female teacher—she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can’t yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don’t matter, and it’s easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: When Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?
 
From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own—ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.
 
This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya’s childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one’s own life.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora by Reem Assil

Arabiyya celebrates the alluring aromas and flavors of Arab food and the welcoming spirit with which they are shared. Written from her point of view as an Arab in diaspora, Reem takes readers on a journey through her Palestinian and Syrian roots, showing how her heritage has inspired her recipes for flatbreads, dips, snacks, platters to share, and more. With a section specializing in breads of the Arab bakery, plus recipes for favorites such as Salatet Fattoush, Falafel Mahshi, Mujaddarra, and Hummus Bil Awarma, Arabiyya showcases the origins and evolution of Arab cuisine and opens up a whole new world of flavor.

Alongside the tempting recipes, Reem shares stories of the power of Arab communities to turn hardship into brilliant, nourishing meals and any occasion into a celebratory feast. Reem then translates this spirit into her own work in California, creating restaurants that define hospitality at all levels. Yes, there are tender lamb dishes, piles of fresh breads, and perfectly cooked rice, but there is also food for thought about what it takes to create a more equitable society, where workers and people often at the margins are brought to the center. Reem’s glorious dishes draw in readers and customers, but it is her infectious warmth that keeps them at the table.

With gorgeous photography, original artwork, and transporting writing, Reem helps readers better understand the Arab diaspora and its global influence on food and culture. She then invites everyone to sit at a table where all are welcome.

Fencing with the King by Diana Abu-Jaber

A mesmerizing breakthrough novel of family myths and inheritances by the award-winning author of Crescent.

The King of Jordan is turning 60! How better to celebrate the occasion than with his favorite pastime—fencing—and with his favorite sparring partner, Gabriel Hamdan, who must be enticed back from America, where he lives with his wife and his daughter, Amani.

Amani, a divorced poet, jumps at the chance to accompany her father to his homeland for the King’s birthday. Her father’s past is a mystery to her—even more so since she found a poem on blue airmail paper slipped into one of his old Arabic books, written by his mother, a Palestinian refugee who arrived in Jordan during World War I. Her words hint at a long-kept family secret, carefully guarded by Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King, who has quite personal reasons for inviting his brother to the birthday party. In a sibling rivalry that carries ancient echoes, the Hamdan brothers must face a reckoning, with themselves and with each other—one that almost costs Amani her life.

With sharp insight into modern politics and family dynamics, taboos around mental illness, and our inescapable relationship to the past, Fencing with the King asks how we contend with inheritance: familial and cultural, hidden and openly contested. Shot through with warmth and vitality, intelligence and spirit, it is absorbing and satisfying on every level, a wise and rare literary treat.

Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir

From the distant past to the present, with fingers and felt-tipped pens, metallic powders and gel pots, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes. The aesthetic trademark of figures ranging from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools; ancient royals and Gen Z beauty influencers alike would attest to its uniquely transformative power. It is undeniably fun—yet it is also far from frivolous.

Seen through Zahra Hankir’s (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history, proof both of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space and of our shared humanity. Through intimate reporting and conversations—with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more—Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of color. What emerges is an unexpectedly moving portrait of a tool that, in various corners of the globe, can signal religious devotion, attract potential partners, ward off evil forces, shield eyes from the sun, transform faces into fantasies, and communicate volumes without saying a word.

Delightful, surprising, and utterly absorbing, Eyeliner is a fascinating tour through streets, stages, and bedrooms around the world, and a thought-provoking reclamation of a key piece of our collective history.

Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye

Featuring new, never-before-published poems; an introduction by bestselling poet and author Edward Hirsch, as well as a foreword and writing tips by the poet; and stunning artwork by bestselling artist Rafael López, Everything Comes Next is essential for poetry readers, classroom teachers, and library collections.

Everything Comes Next is a treasure chest of Naomi Shihab Nye’s most beloved poems and features favorites such as “Famous” and “A Valentine for Ernest Mann” as well as widely shared pieces such as “Kindness” and “Gate A-4.” The book is an introduction to the poet’s work for new readers as well as a comprehensive edition for classroom and family sharing. Writing prompts and tips by the award-winning poet make this an outstanding choice for aspiring poets of all ages.

Plus, check out Libro.fm’s Arab American Heritage playlist and a list of Arab American narrators you may enjoy.

January 2025 Staff Pick: The Safekeep

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster), picked by store co-founders Judy Blume & George Cooper

George raved about this novel so I had to see for myself. And I came away equally enthusiastic. It’s dark and different.

~ Judy

It’s 1961, the terrible war with a German occupation has settled into the past, and Isabel is living alone in the family home in the East of Holland, a house she shared with her mother until the mother’s recent death. Title to the house is held by her uncle, who has no interest in living there, nor do her two brothers, who have busy lives elsewhere.

But the uncle still believes the house will be for the older brother Louis once he marries and begins a family. So when Louis asks Isabel to take in his new girlfriend Eva for a short time, she feels compelled to do so, even though she finds the girl crude and unpleasant.

Thus begins a tale with more twists than a plate of fusilli, and a political revelation that will shake your beliefs in the humanity of the Dutch.

~ George

June Staff Pick: The Demon of Unrest

George with The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson

The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson, (Crown), picked by store co-founder George Cooper

There’s nothing so interesting as reading a history of a profound event when you have an uncomfortable dread that you are living through a run-up to its successor, in this time when a modern “Demon of Unrest” is plaguing our nation.  

Legendary story-teller Larson gives us a detailed account of the period from Lincoln’s election in November, 1860, to the fall of Ft. Sumter on April 13, 1861 and the beginning of the Civil War. We are with the protagonists, North and South, each step of the way as the opportunities for compromise slip away and war fever takes hold. The deadly bombardment of the Fort becomes not a military battle, but a grander version of the duels that still animated Southern manhood. 

In this brilliant addition to Civil War literature, Larson is a master of the telling detail, the moment or quotation that makes us pause. Like this from the southern Senator and plantation owner James Henry Hammond, famed for claiming “Cotton is King.” Near the end of the war, he acknowledged:  

We are here two races, white and black, now both equally American, holding each other in the closest embrace, and utterly unable to extricate ourselves from it, a problem so difficult, so complicated, and so momentous, never was placed in charge of any portion of mankind and on its solution rests our all. 

Who among us now, one-hundred sixty-five years later, would say that we have found that solution.

Celebrate AAPI Month with a Good Book

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month invites us to explore and appreciate the cultures, history, traditions and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Here are a few of the AAPI books we are reading and recommending. Find more in-store or ask for a recommendation.

Your Driver is Waiting by Priya Guns

Buckle up tight as Damani takes you on a ride through her town, or is it any town? Full of fierce commentary on social injustice, the strength of community, loyalty and love in all its messy guises. Fast, furious and fun. A great read!

– Anna (store volunteer)

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds”, a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

– George Cooper (store co-founder)

https://shop.booksandbookskw.com/book/9780063031319Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

Raised by her mother in exile, Xingyin must flee her home in the middle of the night. Isolated and alone, she finds refuge in the royal court she’s trying to escape by hiding in plain sight. Xingyin trains as an archer and never wavers in rescuing her mother, battling epic monsters, other immortals and her own emotions. Xingyin finds her own power and strength. This is an enthralling tale that will sweep you off into the night.

– Rio (staff)

Summer Sisters Gets a New Cover

25th Anniversary Cover of Summer Sisters

Celebrating 25 Years Judy Blume’s Iconic Novel Gets a New Look

Summer Sisters, Judy Blume’s iconic novel of female friendship, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a beautiful new cover – and it’s the August 2023 Read with Jenna book pick!

Jenna writes, “It’s about that time in your life where you’re trying to figure out who you’re going to be. It is the perfect, perfect beach read but that doesn’t mean that it’s an easy read.” Read more of what Jenna says at https://www.today.com/shop/read-with-jenna.

Plus, keep an eye out for more news about the Summer Sisters tv show, currently in development.

You can order a signed copy of Summer Sisters from us. All copies ordered after this date (8/1/23) will feature the new cover. If you want the book signed, please note in your order comments that you’d like a signed copy. Due to volume, it will be signed only. Also, please note, signed copies ordered now will not ship until November 2023 at the earliest.

August Staff Pick: Perilous Times

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee (Ballantine Books), picked by bookseller, Riona Jean

Do you want to fight climate change, battle a dragon, reminisce about lost friends, fight the patriarchy, and more!? Try this new Arthurian Legend on for size.

Bookseller Riona Jean with Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee on an e-reader.

Bookseller Riona Jean picked Perilous Times as the August featured staff pick because it mixed her favorite genres, fantasy and dystopias.

“It remixes the Arthurian Legend in a new and dynamic way,” she writes.

“Mariam is an ecowarrior with FETA, fighting to save the planet from extreme climate change and rising sea levels. Kay is one of King Arthur’s knights, bound to a resurrection tree by Merlin, called to action whenever Britain is in trouble. With great swaths of the UK under water and major cities falling into ruin, Mariam and Kay stumble their way through trying to do the right thing. Watch out for Lancelot, corporate greed, and a nefarious plot to resurrect Arthur getting in the way!”

“Witty, insightful, and poignant, Perilous Times perfectly marries fantastical legend and dystopian new world order.”

Ed note: Riona read Perilous Times on her Kobo Clara 2E, it’s waterproof, made with recycled plastic, and we have them at the bookstore!

May Staff Pick: White Cat, Black Dog

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (Random House), picked by Social Media Manager Robin

“With White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link puts her sui generis magic to work on the older magic of fairy tales, forging something revelatory. These stories delight and terrify us, and seem to say, Yes, this is the way the world works—haven’t you been paying attention? I am now. What a glorious and bewitching gift this book is.

               Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson

Clare is better at this than I am. I just want to stand around the store and hand White Cat, Black Dog to people. Kelly Link’s newest collection of fairy tale-inspired short stories defies easy description, but is a joy to read.

It’s hard to explain, I say, but it’s really good. It’s smart, funny, creepy, and sneaky. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. It’s excellent – and different – and, after you read it, you might find yourself even more afraid of business travel.

Link takes a nugget of a fairy tale, even if you don’t know the story, you’ll recognize the elements – three princes sent on three quests, the dangers of debts owed to the fae. She takes something from the original tale, and weaves something new and unexpected, meaningful and unexplained.

These are the kind of stories that stick with you. Sometimes enchanting, sometimes scary, always thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

A Q&A with Stephanie Clifford

Author of THE FAREWELL TOUR, our March featured staff pick

***Now out in paperback!***

Get out your headphones, THE FAREWELL TOUR will make you want to crank up the music. But first, we are delighted to introduce you to author Stephanie Clifford, who took time out of her busy book launch to chat with us. (Read Assistant Manager Allison’s review of THE FAREWELL TOUR.)

Stephanie Clifford, photo credit: Sarah Bode-Clark Photography.jpg
Stephanie Clifford, photo credit: Sarah Bode-Clark Photography

Q: How big a music fan were you before writing THE FAREWELL TOUR? What was the first album you bought with your own money?

A: I’ve always adored music, from opera to musicals to rock, and play piano and guitar. But I didn’t fall in love with country until high school—I grew up in Seattle, and worked one summer in Arkansas doing trail maintenance in a national forest there, where the only radio station we could get was country. Suddenly, I was hooked, and returned to Seattle at the height of the grunge era to listen to, like, Tammy Wynette—no one in Seattle understood what on earth I was doing.

First album—for some reason it wasn’t an album I first bought, but a cassette-tape single: Prince (cool), “Arms of Orion” (not very cool). 

Q: What was the idea that sparked this novel?

A: Before I began writing this book, I happened to be on a literature-of-the-American-West kick, so Grapes of Wrath and Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry. The landscapes they wrote about were arid and harsh, and I didn’t recognize them. I felt like there was this missing piece of the “Western” genre, that the Northwest, this place I had grown up in—and which, by the way, takes up a rather large geographical chunk of the West!—was completely ignored.  So I began playing with the idea of writing a Western—not a shootout-and-saloons story, but one that considers the myth of the West, and how the landscape shapes its characters—that was set in the historical Northwest.

As I read more and more, I also came to feel that even for writers who were women or were sympathetic to women, like Wallace Stegner or Willa Cather, in the era I was writing about—the book starts in the 1920s—the women in these books literally didn’t get to leave their houses. They were stuck inside, cooking, cleaning, and sewing.  And I thought of the fierce Northwest women I knew, who would basically skin a deer in the morning and then put on lipstick and go shopping at I. Magnin’s downtown in the afternoon, and I thought, just try keeping a Northwest woman inside her house; good luck.

That became the genesis for Lil, the main character. I wanted to get across the grit and battle scars that so many Northwest women of that era had, and also the desire to survive, and give her a life where she has to be out in the world—in this case, via singing country music—and see what happens.

Q: What was interesting to you about this particular time in history, women’s history or music history?

A: First of all, it’s just this incredibly rich time to imagine and research—Lil’s born on the cusp of the Depression, gets her start as a singer in WWII-era Tacoma, lands in Nashville in its golden era—all a gold mine for a writer. I also wanted her to have to navigate her career and art in a time that wasn’t very open to working women generally, and certainly not in the country music.  She’s going to have to make real concessions in order to succeed, which is always interesting to write about.

Q: What were your top 3 songs of 2022? What would be your picks for saddest song? Happiest?

A: Because I was so deep into research for 2022, my Spotify most-played for the year looks like it’s out of 1962!  Tammy Wynette, “Apartment No. 9” – Tammy makes everything sound heartbreaking; Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “Didn’t It Rain” – an incredible, pioneering guitar player; “He Is Fine,” Secret Sisters, a fabulous duo.  Happiest – I love a musical number for a pick-me-up (my first book, Everybody Rise, has tons of musical references, and the title is from a Sondheim song) – so maybe a classic like “Seventy-Six Trombones.”  Saddest, there’s a scene in the book where the characters are discussing the saddest country song, and I think Lil gets it right when she suggests Emmylou Harris’s “Boulder to Birmingham,” written after Harris’s musical partner, Gram Parsons, overdosed and died.  Just try not to cry when you hear Emmylou sing that one.

Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?

A: I just (accidentally) read back-to-back two wonderful, thoughtful books on women during times of civil war/domestic terrorism in the ’70s: V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night, set in the Tamil region of Sri Lanka during the civil war there; and Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses, set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The books made perfect companions and almost talked to each other.

March Staff Pick: The Farewell Tour

The Farewell Tour by Stephanie Clifford (Harper, March 7), picked by Assistant Manager Allison

***Now out in paperback!***

It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.

Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. She yearns to feel the rush of making live music one more time and bask in the glow of a packed house before she makes the last, and most important, stop on the tour: the farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood.

As the novel crisscrosses eras, moving between Lillian’s youth—the Depression, the Second World War, the rise of Nashville—and her middle-aged life in 1980, we see her striving to build a career in the male-dominated world of country music, including the hard choices she makes as she tries to redefine music, love, aging, and womanhood on her own terms.

Allison enjoyed both the book and audiobook versions of this novel. She writes, “Stephanie Clifford fills out the singular story of one woman’s hard rise to country music stardom with the history of country music and the evolution of American culture. Water Lil is a character you won’t soon forget.”

“This well researched novel is also a love letter to country music and the west. If you’ve spent time with either, this novel will be hell bent on tugging at your heartstrings.”

Allison’s playlist for the book includes Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (the song “Bo Weavil Blues” is central to the novel).