Cultural Insights: Books featuring Middle Eastern and Muslim characters

 

Cultural Insights: Books featuring Middle Eastern and Muslim characters 

Are you looking to increase your cultural competency?  While weeding the collection last month, we were sad to notice that our books with Middle Eastern and/or Muslim characters have not been circulating very well and thought the advent of Eid-al-Fitr this week would be a good time to highlight them.  There are relatively few books published each year with Middle Eastern characters and still a lot of prejudice and bias against Arab Americans and Muslims that comes through in media portrayals.  How many positive portrayals of Middle Eastern characters do you see in the movies? (We’d truly like to know! Feel free to comment below.)

Some good basics to know:  What is Eid-al-Fitr? It is the Festival of Sweets, coming at the end of a month of fasting, reflection, and prayer for Ramadan and celebrated this week! (April 21-22, 2023)  Are all Arab Americans Muslim? No, surprisingly in the U.S., only 24% of Arab Americans are Muslim.

How many Arab Americans can you name?  Here are a few: actress Salma Hayek (Lebanese/Mexican); singer Paula Abdul; model Gigi Hadid; Today Show host Hoda Kotb; Christa McAuliffe, the teacher/astronaut who died aboard the space shuttle Challenger; Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal; football star Doug Flutie; Mothers Against Drunk Driving founder Candy Lightner; Hollywood actor and producer Tony Shalhoub; and Jacques Nasser, former president and chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co.

If you’d like to read more stories from an Arab American or Muslim American perspective, here are a few to consider:

 

The lines we cross by Abdel-Fattah

                Michael’s parents take him to anti-immigration rallies, which he doesn’t think too hard about until a girl named Mina shows up in his classroom. Confident, funny, and razor-smart, Mina challenges the beliefs Michael has grown up with.

 

Internment by Samira Ahmed

                In a frightening near future, Islamophobia reaches a frenzy and Muslim-Americans are rounded up and sent to concentration camps for observation.  Layla, a teen girl, brainstorms ways to gather support outside the camps and leads a revolution.

 

All American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie

                Deep look into the life of a teen girl discovering her faith and recognizing the Islamophobia around her.

 

Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

                Maya is the only Muslim and Indian girl at her school, and while she’d like to go to NYC to study film, her overprotective parents would like her to study medicine closer to home.  After a terrorist attack in their state, following close on the heels of 9-11, Maya’s family is under close scrutiny with many in the community sure they are to blame.

 

Conditional Citizens by Laila Lalami

                Autobiographical account of the journey of Morrocan immigrants as they become US citizens, using the experiences to explore rights, liberties, and protections that highlight the double standards and wrongs in our society.  A Pulitzer Prize finalist.