✨ National Arab American Heritage Month (NAAHM) is celebrated in April. The first Arab American Heritage Day was celebrated on October 25, 1992. NAAHM celebrates the heritage and culture of Arab Americans and Arabic-speaking Americans. It also recognizes the contributions of Arab Americans to the United States, including:

🌙 The history of Arab migration to America 🌙 The diversity within the Arab American community 🌙 Important customs and traditions 🌙 The fight for civil rights and social justice

✨ NAAHM also serves as a time to: 🌙 Combat Anti-Arab bigotry 🌙 Challenge stereotypes and prejudices

✨ In 2023, the president declared April National Arab American Heritage Month. However, I felt it necessary to recognize Arab American Heritage Day this year, too. I'm Palestinian 🇵🇸, but growing up, I never saw that word printed on a page, never saw it recognized as a nationality in novels or newspapers. We're here. We exist. We will not be erased, ignored, or silenced.

✨ In celebration of these voices, here are a few books by Arab and 🇵🇸Palestinian authors to consider adding to your TBR.

🌙 A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum 🌙 Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 The Woman From Tantoura by Radwa Ashour 🌙 You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat 🌙 Crescent by Diana Abu Jaber 🌙 Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 🌙 Minor Detail by Adania Shibli 🌙 As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh 🌙 Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi 🌙 Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar 🌙 The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah 🌙 Exhausted on the Cross by Najwan Darwish 🌙 Palestine Is Throwing a Party and the Whole World Is Invited by Kareem Rabie 🌙 My First and Only Love by Sahar Khalifeh 🌙 Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd 🌙 Among the Almond Trees by Hussein Barghouthi 🌙 Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (edited) by Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean 🌙 The Book of Ramallah (edited) by Maya Abu Al-Hayat 🌙 Stories Under Occupation: And Other Plays from Palestine (edited) by Samer al-Saber and Gary M. English 🌙 Ever Since I Did Not Die by Ramy al-Asheq 🌙 Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine by Mohammad Sabaaneh 🌙 Post-Millennial Palestine: Literature, Memory, Resistance (edited) by Ahmad Qabaha and Rachel Gregory Fox 🌙 The Dance of the Deep-Blue Scorpion by Akram Musallam 🌙 Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr 🌙 The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey by Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt 🌙 Evil Eye by Etaf Rum 🌙 A Child in Palestine by Naji al-Ali 🌙 Murals by Mahmoud Darwish 🌙 Farah Rocks by Susan Muaddi Darraj 🌙 Halal Hot Dogs by Suzannah Aziz, illustrated by Parwinder Singh 🌙 Baba, What Does My Name Mean? A Journey to Palestine by Rifk Ebeid, illustrated by Lamaa Jawhari 🌙 The Olive Tree Said to Me by N. Salem 🌙 Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah 🌙 Don't Read The Comments by Eric Smith 🌙 Jasmine Falling by Shereen Malherbe 🌙 Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 The Lady of Tel Aviv by Raba’i al-Madhoun 🌙 Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family by Najla Said

sick and tired of reading books by brown writers that are just about pain and intergenerational trauma. sick and tired of the abusive uncles and the dead mothers. sick and tired of the white man who’s the only one that makes the brown girl happy. sick and tired of the sexually repressed women, the culturally ingrained misogyny, the omnipresent racist abuse, the sinister family pasts. sick and tired of this revolving literary door of pain and anguish.

Hanan al-Shaykh

Hanan al-Shaykh was born in 1944 in Beurit, Lebanon. Al-Shaykh is one of the Arab world's most acclaimed contemporary writers, and her writing has been translated into 28 languages. She has written eight novels, three plays, a short story collection, and a memoir. In 2019, al-Shaykh was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

I wanna follow more modern Arab and Muslim authors but I don't know how to find them or where to start.

{Hannah Green, from "Are you still hungry, Mother?"/ Anne Carson/Sam Gordon, "A Mother's Hate"/ Ella Wilson/ Joan Tierney/ Ella Wilson/ Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous/ Unknown/ Nayyirah Waheed/ Sharon Olds, “Holding To A Wall, Treading Saltwater”/ John Green, Turtles All the Way Down/ Safia Elhillo, "an inheritance," published in Narrative Northeast/ Annie Ernaux, from I Remain in Darkness/ Poplar Street by Chen Chen/ Unknown/ Tumblr User: @inkskinned/ Elena Poniatowska, from "La Flor de Lis," published c. January 2011/ Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom}

“Killing the flowers will not delay spring.”

(Al-Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Syria)

LITTLE PALESTINE, DIARY OF A SIEGE (2021) DIR. ABDALLAH AL-KHATIB

Ok, so I just want to get the general fandom consensus on what they think Jason's ethnicity is, because during DITF he though Lady Shiva was a viable option for his birth mom

شكر

Acquire the skill of amazement.

Not only through sunsets and mountains but in the normality of life. Find yourself to be thankful in every way of life. You will learn to be grateful for all your blessings that we so often undermine and gain the joy of it.

Find beauty in the remarkable and in nothingness.

— mindofserenity

Read Palestine Week

🇵🇸 Good morning, my beautiful bookish bats. Can I start by saying a huge THANK YOU for sharing my Queer Palestinian Book post? Seriously, thank you so much. Let's keep that momentum by observing Read Palestine Week (Nov 29 - Dec 5). I've compiled a list of books to help you, along with a list of upcoming events and resources you can use this week and beyond.

🇵🇸 A collective of over 350 global publishers and individuals issued a public statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Publishers for Palestine have organized an international #ReadPalestine week, starting today (International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People).

🇵🇸 These publishers have made many resources and e-books available for free (with more to come). A few include award-winning fiction and poetry by Palestinian and Palestinian diaspora authors. You'll also find non-fiction books about Palestinian history, politics, arts, culture, and “books about organizing, resistance, and solidarity for a Free Palestine.” You can visit publishersforpalestine.org to download some of the books they have available.

POETRY 🌙 Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha 🌙 Affiliation by Mira Mattar 🌙 Enemy of the Sun by Samih al-Qasim 🌙 I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti 🌙 A Mountainous Journey by Fadwa Tuqan 🌙 So What by Taha Muhammad Ali 🌙 The Butterfly’s Burden by Mahmoud Darwish 🌙 To All the Yellow Flowers by Raya Tuffaha

FICTION 🌙 Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury 🌙 Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales 🌙 Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani 🌙 Morning in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Gaze Writes Back by Young Writers in Gaze 🌙 Palestine +100:Stories from a Century after the Nakba 🌙 Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh 🌙 Out of Time by Samira Azzam

🌙 The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher 🌙 You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat 🌙 A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum 🌙 Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 🌙 A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar 🌙 Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Minor Detail by Adania Shibli 🌙 The Woman From Tantoura by Radwa Ashour

NON-FICTION 🌙 Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour 🌙 Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine by Raja Shehadeh 🌙 Palestinian Art, 1850–2005 by Kamal Boullata 🌙 Palestine by Joe Sacco 🌙 The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker by Sami Al Jundi & Jen Marlowe 🌙 Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha 🌙 Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat 🌙 The Words of My Father: Love and Pain in Palestine by Yousef Khalil Bashir

🌙 Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution by Hanan Karaman Munayyer 🌙 Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture by Salim Tamari 🌙 This Is Not a Border: Reportage and Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature 🌙 We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir, by Raja Shehadeh 🌙 Les échos de la mémoire. Une enfance palestinienne à Jérusalem, by Issa J. Boullata 🌙 A Party For Thaera: Palestinian Women Write Life In Prison 🌙 Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, 🌙 Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine

“It fascinates Manar—not just history in general, with its empires, collapses, and revivals, but also the faint, persistent echoes that seem to travel through the millennia. Land eaten and reshuffled, homes taken—daughters and sons speaking enemy languages, forgetting their own—the belief that we are owed something by the cosmos.”

- Salt Houses by Hala Alyan

"You won't find the same person twice, not even in the same person."

— Mahmoud Darwish

" give me a house with tall windows and white chiffon curtains, a warm kitchen hearth and the home of your even warmer arms. a little garden where we plant flowers and fruits together, laughing on lazy sunny days and read together with your head resting in my lap. "

"'مجھے لمبے کھڑکیوں اور سفید شفان کے پردوں کے ساتھ ایک گھر، ایک گرم باورچی خانے کی چولہا اور آپ کے اس سے بھی زیادہ گرم بازوؤں کا گھر دیں۔ ایک چھوٹا سا باغ جہاں ہم پھول اور پھل اکٹھے لگاتے ہیں، سست دھوپ کے دنوں میں ہنستے ہیں اور کتابیں پڑھتے ہیں جبکی آپکا سر میرے گود میں ہو "

{Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath/ Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest/ Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life/ Susan Sontag/ Liv Ullmann, from Changing (Knopf, 1976)/ Katherine Mansfield, in a letter to J.M. Murry, dated December 14, 1919, Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield (Penguin Classics, 1977)/ Anne Sexton,A Self-Portrait in Letters/ Anne Sexton,A Self-Portrait in Letters/ Richard Siken/ Papi/ Anais Nin/ Ghada Al-Samman/ Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings}