Berlin-Peck Memorial Library Celebrating Muslim Heritage Month

Press release from the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library:

BERLIN, CT — Celebrate Muslim Heritage Month with stories, histories, and voices that reflect the richness and diversity of Muslim life around the world.

January is Muslim Heritage Month.

Celebrate with stories, histories, and voices that reflect the richness and diversity of Muslim life around the world.

The Berlin-Peck Memorial Library is located at 234 Kensington Road, Berlin.

Fiction

Radiant Fugitives

Nawaaz Ahmed

A tour-de-force debut following three generations of a Muslim-Indian family confronted with a nation on the brink of change in Obama-era San Francisco and Texas with a blockbuster ending you have to read to believe.

Homeland Elegies

Ayad Akhtar

A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

The Bones Of Grace

Tahmima Anam

From the award-winning, nationally bestselling author of A Golden Age and The Good Muslim comes a lyrical, deeply moving modern love story about belonging, migration, tragedy, survival, and the mysteries of origins.

When We Were Sisters

Fatimah Asghar

An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in America in this lyrical debut novel from the acclaimed author of If They Come For Us.

The Golden Legend

Nadeem Aslam

In his characteristically luminous prose, Nadeem Aslam has given us a lionhearted novel that reflects Pakistan’s past and present in a single mirror, a story of corruption, resilience, and the disguises that are sometimes necessary for survival-a revelatory portrait of the human spirit.

Ramadan Ramsey

Louis Edwards

The Guggenheim and Whiting Award-winning author makes his long-awaited comeback with this epic tale, spanning from the Deep South to the Middle East, that bridges four countries, two cultures, and three families who struggle to love and survive in the face of war, natural disasters, and other calamities beyond their control.

These Impossible Things

Salma El-Wardany

It’s always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents, aunties and uncles, they’ve learned to live their own lives alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women…With growing older and the stakes of love and life growing higher, the delicate balancing act between rebellion and religion is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. As their lives begin to take different paths, Malak, Kees, and Jenna–now on the precipice of true adulthood–must find a way back to each other as they reconcile faith, family, and tradition with their own needs and desires.

Between Two Moons

Aisha Abdel Gawad

A deeply moving family story about identity, faith, and belonging set in the Muslim immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn following three siblings coming of age over the course of one Ramadan.

A Pure Heart

Rajia Hassib

A powerful novel about two Egyptian sisters, their divergent fates, and the secrets of one family.

Blackwater Falls

Ausma Zehanat Khan

Delving deep into racial tensions, and police corruption and violence, Blackwater Falls examines a series of crimes within the context of contemporary American politics with compassion and searing insight.

The Bad Muslim Discount

Syed Masood

Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 90s through to San Francisco in 2016, a comic novel about being Muslim immigrants in modern America.

The Beauty Of Your Face

Sahar Mustafah

Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter-radicalized by the online alt-right-attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories, and into a profound and moving exploration of one woman’s life in a nation at odds with its ideals.

The Retreat

Zara Raheem

In Zara Raheem’s newest novel we meet Nadia Abbasi–whose attempts to save her marriage create unexpected complications–and follow her as she navigates the twists and turns of love.

Non-Fiction

The Islamic Jesus
How The King Of The Jews Became A Prophet Of The Muslims

Mustafa Akyol

Looks at the Islamic view of Jesus, exploring its origins in the seventh century and how it relates to the views of the Jews and Christians of the day.

Go Back To Where You Came From
And Other Helpful Recommendations On How To Become American

Wajahat Ali

In Go Back to Where You Came From, he tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy, and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration, and pop culture. In this refreshingly bold, hopeful, and uproarious memoir, Ali offers indispensable lessons for cultivating a more compassionate, inclusive, and delicious America.

The Meaning Of The Holy Qur’an

Abdullah Yusuf Ali

This is a compact and revised edition of Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation of The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an in modern English. It contains the complete translation of the Qur’anic text and retains essential notes of Yusuf Ali’s exhaustive commentary on the Qur’an, which enables the reader to gain a better understanding of its message and helps to reveal some of the inexhaustible depth of knowledge it contains. One of the most widely-used and known translations of the Qur’an into modern English, with 472 notes and an introduction.

What Is Veiling?

Sahar Amer

Examines the practice of veiling in Muslim culture, discussing its history, its religious, social, and political significance, and its importance to both conservative and progressive Muslim women as a symbol of commitment to their beliefs.-

Islam
A Short History

Karen Armstrong

The distillation of years of thinking and writing about Islam, it demonstrates that the world’s fastest-growing faith is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest.

Muhammad
A Biography Of The Prophet

Karen Armstrong

This biography attempts to strip away centuries of distortion and myth and present a balanced view of the man whose religion continues to dramatically affect the course of history.

I Speak For Myself
American Women On Being Muslim

Maria M. Ebrahimji, Zahra T. Suratwala

I Speak for Myself is a must read for Americans seeking understanding of Islam from young women who were all born in the USA.

After The Prophet
The Epic Story Of The Shia-Sunni Split In Islam

Lesley Hazleton

A narrative history of the origins of the Shia and Sunni conflict describes how a seventh-century struggle between the supporters of the late Muhammad’s surviving family members erupted in a massacre at Karbala that would become a central component of Shia Islam.

Introduction To Islam
Beliefs And Practices In Historical Perspective

Carole Hillenbrand

A comprehensive history of Islam and the diverse beliefs and practices of Muslims, written by one of the most eminent historians of Islam working today Carole Hillenbrand, long acknowledged as a preeminent authority on Islam, has now written a superb introduction to this great world religion, a book that promises to be the most lucid, nuanced text of its kind on the market.

Brown Album
Essays On Exile And Identity

Porochista Khakpour

Brown Album is a stirring collection of essays, at times humorous and at times profound, drawn from more than a decade of Khakpour’s work. Altogether, it reveals the tolls that immigrant life in this country can take on a person and the joys that life can give.

Islam
Religion, History, And Civilization

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

One of the world’s leading Islamicists offers a concise introduction to the history, beliefs, and practice of his faith.

If The Oceans Were Ink
An Unlikely Friendship And A Journey To The Heart Of The Quran

Carla Power

If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power’s eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship-between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh-had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names. Both knew that a close look at the Quran would reveal a faith that preached peace and not mass murder; respect for women and not oppression. And so they embarked on a yearlong journey through the controversial text.

Biography and Memoir

Children Of Dust

Ali Eteraz

From Eteraz’s schooling in a madrassa in Pakistan to his teenage years as a Muslim American in the Bible Belt, and back to Pakistan to find a pious Muslim wife, this saga captures the heart of our universal quest for identity.

Hijab Butch Blues

Lamya H

A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this ‘raw and relatable memoir that challenges societal norms and expectations’ (Linah Mohammad, NPR).

Becoming Baba
Fatherhood, Faith, And Finding Meaning In America

Aymann Ismail

From Slate staff writer Aymann Ismail comes an exquisite memoir about fatherhood, religion, and the search for identity in an ever-shifting world.

The White Mosque

Sofia Samatar

A historical tapestry of border-crossing travelers, of students, wanderers, martyrs and invaders, The White Mosque is a memoiristic, prismatic record of a journey through Uzbekistan and of the strange shifts, encounters, and accidents that combine to create an identity.

Graphic Novel

Welcome To The New World

Jake Halpern, Michael Sloan

Now in a full-length book, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize—winning graphic story of a refugee family who fled the civil war in Syria to make a new life in America.

This press release was produced by the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.