For National Arab American Heritage Month, UVA librarians honor the achievements of four Arab American women writers who express their Levantine birthright in stories that confront stereotypes and celebrate cultural legacy.
“Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072” by Eman Abdelhadi (Common Notions, 2022)
“Everything for Everyone” is a remarkable work of speculative fiction that imagines our world transformed. Structured as a collection of oral histories marking the 20th anniversary of the insurrections that dismantled capitalism and gave rise to a new, inclusive communal order, the book spans an astonishing breadth of human experience; from the perspective of children and teenagers navigating this reimagined world to the story of how lasting peace finally came to the Middle East. While some accounts of upheaval and transformation carry an unsettling edge, they only make the book's ultimate vision of hope and peace more earned and more resonant. This is a book best read slowly, with intention, savoring each chapter and allowing yourself to genuinely try on a new “what if” for our collective future.
— Carla Lee, Deputy Librarian and Associate Dean for Administration
“The Skin and Its Girl” by Sarah Cypher (Ballantine Books, 2023)
The color of skin is so important in Sarah Cypher’s stunning novel that the reader begins searching for the meaning of the extended metaphor almost immediately. Betty, the baby born on the first page of the novel, is blue, but she is not dead or oxygen-depleted — she is just blue — and she stays blue for her whole life. Is this blueness a product of her mother's depression, a symbol of Betty’s “otherness” as queer and/or part-Palestinian, a memorialization of her family’s famed reputation as soap makers (specifically, indigo-colored soap), or is it one more mystical element of the legends surrounding many generations of a Palestinian family? The narrative is basically Betty speaking graveside to her dead Aunt Nuha, but it is also the stories told by Aunt Nuha about the Rummanis. Nuha often says, “There is no truth but in old women’s tales,” yet Nuha herself, we come to discover, isn't who she says she is. Ultimately, Betty must make a decision about her own identity and whether to stay true blue to America.
— Leigh Rockey, Librarian for Collections Management and Video Resources
“We Walked On” by Thérèse Soukar Chehade (Regal House Publishing, 2024)
“There is nothing more humane or uplifting than a good book.” So writes schoolteacher Hisham to his favorite pupil Rita, and by the end of “We Walked On,” this sentiment is fully borne by the buoyant truths revealed. The narrative switches between Hisham and Rita, and we live the Lebanese Civil War through them. Hisham’s chapters are written in the third person while Rita’s are first person, a shift that is a little jarring at first, but author Thérèse Soukar Chehade was herself a young girl in Beirut in the 1970s, so she makes it work. Potential readers should not let the prospect of encountering the brutality and injustice of war up close dissuade them from starting this book. Its contents are tender, hopeful, and instructive as characters deal with first kisses, complicated friendships, and Easter Sundays. Yes, Beirut implodes, but Hisham and Rita save us through their bold humanity. We end up in Massachusetts, years later, remembering both beauty and horror of life during war.
— Leigh Rockey, Librarian for Collections Management and Video Resources
“Behind You Is the Sea” by Susan Muaddi Darraj (HarperVia, 2024)
Set in Baltimore, “Behind You Is the Sea” follows a few interconnected families of Palestinian immigrants through the challenges and rewards of everyday life. Samira is a relatively thriving, self-sufficient, successful lawyer whose family treats her like a broken woman all because she was divorced for not getting pregnant. How can she live as both a success by American standards and as a failure by family standards? While the action of the book is mostly stateside, sometimes there are shattering events that take place off-stage in Palestine that force the homeland to the center of everything. Rania, for example, has just hired Samira to help her advocate for her autistic son’s education in Maryland public schools, but a recent mysterious death of a cousin in the West Bank soon demands all of Rania's attention. She stumbles over evidence linking her husband to the death and works to discover whether he has participated in an “honor killing” while he was recently in Tel al-Hilou. At the conclusion of the book, at the end of all the stories, we travel to Dar Salameh with Marcus, who has never been to Palestine but must now return his father’s body there for burial. Life is very different in the West Bank, where memories of the intifadas complicate even the most joyous of occasions, like weddings, and the most common of affairs, like funerals. Marcus returns to Baltimore with new family secrets and realizes there will never be an end to the revelations of an Arab American family.
— Leigh Rockey, Librarian for Collections Management and Video Resources
“The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly” by Susan Muaddi Darraj (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007)
Nadia, Aliyah, Hanan, and Reema are friends who live in Philadelphia in a working-class neighborhood. They are flawed, fully fleshed characters representing the conflict between inherited culture and lived reality. We hear from each of them as they grapple with being Americans born to parents from Palestine, and we also get little narratives about their mothers, so we can compare generational perspectives. Nadia grieves her father while her mother uncovers his association with a blonde American woman she calls Homewrecker Barbie. Aliyah goes to Ramallah and discovers that she is really neither American nor Palestinian, but her mother discourages her from writing about her epiphany lest it reflect poorly on her relatives. Hanan marries a man whose Irish-descended family can only see her as something other than American while her own mother castigates her for not being more like an Arabic girl. Reema’s befuddlement with her boyfriend’s Hollywood-derived misconceptions of Arabs is juxtaposed against her mother’s stories of life in refugee camps. The blend of the experiences of all of these women is a revelatory peak into how so many Americans struggle with identity and an imposed status of ethnicity.
— Leigh Rockey, Librarian for Collections Management and Video Resources