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AAHM (Staff Picks)


Showing 1 - 20 of 20  There are a total of 20 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The Aleppo cookbook"
Star rating for The Aleppo cookbook
Description:
It is hardly surprising that Aleppo, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, is also home to one of the world's most distinguished and vibrant cuisines. Surrounded by fertile lands and located at the end of the Silk Road, which passed through Central Asia and Mesopotamia, Aleppo was a food capital long before Paris, Rome, or New York. Its diverse communities of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Circassians, and others contributed to its culinary...
Book cover for "Amira's picture day"
Star rating for Amira's picture day
Author:
Description:
Amira is excited because tomorrow is Eid with special clothes, treats, gifts, and a morning party at her mosque; but then she realizes that she is going to miss class picture day at school, something she was also looking forward to--so Amira has to figure out a way to be in two places at once.
Book cover for "The beekeeper of Aleppo"
Star rating for The beekeeper of Aleppo
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Every morning, Nuri the beekeeper rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, his wife Afra, a gifted artist, sells her paintings at the open-air market in the square. They live simply, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo -- until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home....
Book cover for "Conditional citizens"
Star rating for Conditional citizens
Description:
"The acclaimed, award-winning novelist--author of The Moor's Account and The Other Americans--now gives us a bracingly personal work of nonfiction that is concerned with the experiences of "conditional citizens." What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration...
Book cover for "Darius the Great is not okay"
Star rating for Darius the Great is not okay
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life. "Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He's a Fractional Persian -- half, his mom's side -- and his first ever trip to Iran is about to change his life. Darius has never really fit in at home, and he's sure...
Book cover for "How does it feel to be a problem?"
Star rating for How does it feel to be a problem?
Description:
The story of how young Arab and Muslim Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy. Just over a century ago, W.E.B. Du Bois posed a probing question in his classic The Souls of Black Folk: How does it feel to be a problem? Now, Moustafa Bayoumi asks the same about America's new "problem"--Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn,...
Book cover for "Khali ="
Star rating for Khali =
Description:
"After a young girl's mother dies, Empty appears and silently takes up the big blank space left behind. For some time, the girl can't connect with her dad or any friends, and Empty is her closest companion. But then, a happy reminder of her mom pops up one day, and this bit of joy helps the little girl open up to the world around her. Empty stays around, but the little girl starts to connect with others and share new moments of happiness with them....
Book cover for "Lailah's lunchbox"
Star rating for Lailah's lunchbox
Author:
Description:
Now that she is ten, Lailah is delighted that she can fast during the month of Ramadan like her family and her friends in Abu Dhabi, but finding a way to explain to her teacher and classmates in Atlanta is a challenge until she gets some good advice from the librarian, Mrs. Carman.
Book cover for "Life without a recipe"
Star rating for Life without a recipe
Description:
A follow-up to "The Language of Baklava" continues the story of the author's struggles with cross-cultural values and how they shaped her coming of age and her culinary life, tracing her three marriages, her literary ambitions, and her midlife decision to become a parent.
Book cover for "Love from A to Z"
Star rating for Love from A to Z
Author:
Series:
Love from (Ali) volume 1.
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Eighteen-year-old Muslims Adam and Zayneb meet in Doha, Qatar, during spring break and fall in love as both struggle to find a way to live their own truths. "A Marvel: something you find amazing. Even ordinary-amazing. Like potatoes - because they make french fries happen. Like the perfect fries Adam and his mom used to make together. An Oddity: whatever gives you pause. Like the fact that there are hateful people in the world. Like Zayneb's teacher,...
Book cover for "Love is an ex-country"
Star rating for Love is an ex-country
Description:
"Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat woman. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this "viscerally elegant" and "intimately edgy" memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America. Randa Jarrar is a fearless voice of dissent who has been called "politically incorrect." As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly...
Book cover for "The other Americans"
Star rating for The other Americans
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"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, a jazz composer, returns home to a small town in the Mojave after hearing that her father, owner of a popular restaurant there, has been killed in a...
Book cover for "Other words for home"
Star rating for Other words for home
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Sent with her mother to the safety of a relative's home in Cincinnati when her Syrian hometown is overshadowed by violence, Jude worries for the family members who were left behind as she adjusts to a new life with unexpected surprises. ""I am learning how to be / sad / and happy / at the same time." Jude never thought she'd be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. But when things in her hometown...
Book cover for "The proudest blue"
Star rating for The proudest blue
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Faizah relates how she feels on the first day her sister, sixth-grader Asiya, wears a hijab to school. The first day of wearing hijab is important. It means being strong. With her new backpack and light-up shoes, Faizah knows the first day of school is going to be special. It's the start of a brand-new year, and best of all, it's her older sister Asiya's first day of hijab - made of a fabric of beautiful blue, like the ocean waving to the sky. But...
Book cover for "Tahini and turmeric"
Star rating for Tahini and turmeric
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Cofounders of MayIHaveThatRecipe.com share 101 inventive vegan Middle Eastern recipes. Add a dash of Spain, a chunk of Lebanon, a splash of Israel, and a hint of America. Blend until smooth and voila! You may end up with a well-mixed identity crisis, but happily you'll get Vicky Cohen and Ruth Fox, amazingly creative and food-mad sisters raised in Barcelona by Syrian-Lebanese Jewish parents. Since moving to the United States about twenty years ago,...
Book cover for "The turtle of Michigan"
Star rating for The turtle of Michigan
Series:
Turtle of Oman volume 2.
Description:
Eight-year-old Aref is excited to reunite with his father in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he will start a new school, and while Aref misses his grandfather, his Sidi, he knows that his home in Oman will always be waiting for him.
Book cover for "We hunt the flame"
Star rating for We hunt the flame
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
In a world inspired by ancient Arabia, seventeen-year-old huntress Zafira must disguise herself as a man to seek a lost artifact that could return magic to her cursed world. Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the king. Both are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya-- but neither...
Book cover for "What strange paradise"
Star rating for What strange paradise
Description:
"More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage...
Book cover for "Wishing upon the same stars"
Star rating for Wishing upon the same stars
Description:
When twelve-year-old Yasmeen Khoury moves with her family to San Antonio, all she wants to do is fit in. But her classmates in Texas are nothing like her friends in the predominantly Arab neighbourhood back in Detroit where she grew up. Almost immediately, Yasmeen feels like the odd one out, and as she faces middle school mean girls and navigates making new friends, she feels more alone than ever before. Then Yasmeen meets her neighbour Ayelet Cohen,...
Book cover for "The wrong end of the table"
Star rating for The wrong end of the table
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
What happens when a shy, awkward Arab girl with a weird name and an unfortunate propensity toward facial hair is uprooted from her comfortable homeland of Iraq, and thrust into the cold, alien town of Columbus, Ohio, with its Egg McMuffins, Barbie dolls, and kids playing doctor everywhere? This is Ayser Salman's story.