Staff Picks - LibGuides at Boulder Public Library

Kaley S. recommends Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

04/23/2025

Boulder Library

adult fiction, lived experiences, immigrants, Arab, multicultural, multiracial, refugees, .Kaley S.'s reviews

This beautifully written and poetic book addresses the complexities that came about for Palestinians and Jews before, during, and after the establishment of Israel. Ultimately revealing the human nature that ties us all together, this deeply moving and profound novel shines light on the ripple effect that harm can do to a person, a city, a state, a culture, and a world. The book begs the reader to determine that passion can blur the lines of love and hate and blind us to an exit of a cycle.

Publisher description:

This is Amal's story, the story of one family's struggle and survival through over sixty years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, carrying us from Jenin to Jerusalem, to Lebanon and the anonymity of America. It is a story shaped by scars and fear, but also by the transformative intimacy of marriage and the fierce protectiveness of motherhood. It is a story of faith, forgiveness, and life-sustaining love. Mornings in Jenin is haunting and heart-wrenching, a novel of vital contemporary importance. Lending human voices to the headlines, it forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining political conflicts of our lifetimes

Find Mornings in Jenin in our online catalog

Bergen recommends Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

02/10/2025

Boulder Library

adult fiction, political fiction, art, Arab, multicultural, .Bergen's reviews

Sonia's life is a mess when she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. What follows is a brilliant examination of art, personal and national identity, and the power of community. The book plays with form and trusts us to read between the lines. The ending, like the title, is haunting.

Publisher's description:

A stage actress returns to Palestine to visit her older sister and becomes unwittingly involved with a local group who wants to put on a production of Hamlet in the West Bank using all Palestinian actors.

Find Enter Ghost in our online catalog

Sarah M. recommends The Places in Between by Rory Stewart

12/11/2024

Boulder Library

adult nonfiction, Arab, multicultural, religiously diverse

Accompany Rory, a young American, as he goes by foot across Afghanistan in 2002. The reign of the Taliban has ended and the country is relatively quiet. Factions of citizens live in small, rural villages. The author writes about his interactions, conversations, and overnight stays during travel.

Publisher description:

In January 2002, Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan, surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion-a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan's first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following. Through these encounters-by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny-Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.

Find The Places in Between in our online catalog

Saoirse recommends The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi

11/08/2024

Boulder Library

history, lived experiences, equity, Arab, multicultural, multiracial, religiously diverse, refugees, .Saoirse's reviews

Palestinian historian Khalidi writes a nuanced and lived experience history that explores the historic and present experiences of Palestinians. It is fundamentally a critique of imperialism, Southwest Asian geopolitics, Israel, the United Sates, Western Europe, and Palestinian political leadership. I've wanted to know more about Palestine and Israel for a long time. Palestinian historian Khaldidi's account of 1917-2017 in the region is a deeply engaging and informed critique not often heard in the U.S. Most especially his experience of 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut personalized this history. Highly recommend listening to on audiobook.

Publisher's description:
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

Find The Hundred Years' War on Palestine in our online catalog.

Kelly K. recommends Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar

03/14/2023

Boulder Library

adult nonfiction, poetry, lived experiences, Arab, religiously diverse

Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite contemporary poets. His works wrestle with everything from faith to addiction. For me, I felt that even though this collection goes to some dark places, it ends with radiant joy.

Publisher's description:

This highly-anticipated debut boldly confronts addiction and courses the strenuous path of recovery, beginning in the wilds of the mind. Poems confront craving, control, the constant battle of alcoholism and sobriety, and the questioning of the self and its instincts within the context of this never-ending fight.

Find Calling a Wolf a Wolf in our online catalog.

Featured Title: The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

03/02/2023

Boulder Library

adult fiction, fantasy, .Brett's reviews, Arab, BIPOC, featured titles

An action-packed fantasy from Shannon Chakraborty, author of The Daevabad Trilogy. This story of a former shipmaster, retired from the pirate life to raise her daughter but pulled in for one last job, will appeal to fans of Middle Eastern-influenced fantasy like G. Willow Wilson's The Bird King.

Publisher's description:

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean's most notorious pirates, she's survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural. But when she's tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she's offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade's kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family's future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God's will. Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there's more to this job, and the girl's disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there's always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power...and the price might be your very soul.

Find The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi in our online catalog.

Quetzalli recommends The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

11/15/2022

Boulder Library

autobiography, graphic novels, history, lived experiences, immigrants, Arab, BIPOC, religiously diverse

Part memoir, part history of Iran's political landscape in the 20th century, Satrapi brilliantly ties her own identity crisis with that of her country's. This is by far one of my favorite books of all time. I read it for the first time when I was 13 and have read it several times since. It's so good, I almost don't want others to read it so that it can be my special book forever! Those who love coming of age stories, history, and mid-20th century politics will want to read this book.

Publisher's description:

Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming --both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.

Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom -- Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.

Find The Complete Persepolis in our online catalog.

Allison recommends A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi

07/15/2022

Boulder Library

romance, teen fiction, Arab, multicultural, multiracial, .Allison's reviews

This book takes on identity, race, and Islamophobia in a post-9/11 world, showing the powerful and devastating impact of prejudice and first love. It is both heart-wrenching and heartwarming at the same time. I found the audio version of this book to be engaging and eye-opening.

Publisher's description:

It's a year after 9/11, an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who’s tired of being stereotyped. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She's tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments -- even the physical violence she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. She decided long ago not to trust anyone anymore, and she doesn't expect, or even try, to fit in anywhere or let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother. But then she meets Ocean James. He’s the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her—they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds—and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to let it down.

Find A Very Large Expanse of Sea in our online catalog.

Alice recommends The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story by Aya Khalil

04/28/2022

Boulder Library

children's, .Alice's reviews, friendship, lived experiences, picture books, immigrants, Arab, BIPOC

Kanzi's family is new to the USA from Egypt, and she wants to fit in with the kids at school. A classmate teases Kanzi when Mama calls her habibti, but her teacher invites her to share something special from home, and Kanzi brings a quilt her Teita made. With Mama's help, the class creates a bulletin-board quilt with everyone's name written in Arabic characters, which sparks another class to make a similar display of names in Japanese characters. I love the support Kanzi finds from her teacher and mother for sharing elements of her culture!

Publisher's description: Kanzi’s family has moved from Egypt to America, and on her first day in a new school, what she wants more than anything is to fit in. Maybe that’s why she forgets to take the kofta sandwich her mother has made for her lunch, but that backfires when Mama shows up at school with the sandwich. Mama wears a hijab and calls her daughter Habibti (dear one). When she leaves, the teasing starts. That night, Kanzi wraps herself in the beautiful Arabic quilt her teita (grandma) in Cairo gave her and writes a poem in Arabic about the quilt. Next day her teacher sees the poem and gets the entire class excited about creating a “quilt” (a paper collage) of student names in Arabic. In the end, Kanzi’s most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one.

Find The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story in our catalog.

Alice recommends Meet Yasmin! by Saadia Faruqi

04/07/2022

Boulder Library

children's, .Alice's reviews, lived experiences, juvenile fiction, Arab

Yasmin is a second-grader who learns a lot about herself as she tries new things. In four vignettes, she explores her neighborhood, her artistic and engineering abilities, and her mother's closet-each time solving a problem in her own unique way!

Publisher's description: In this compilation of four separately published books, Pakistani American second grader Yasmin learns to cope with the small problems of school and home, while gaining confidence in her own skills and creative abilities.

Find Meet Yasmin! in our catalog.