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The Arab American Book Award, established in 2006, is an annual literary award to celebrate and support the research of, and the written work of, Arab Americans and their culture. The Arab American Book Award encourages the publication and excellence of books that preserve and advance the understanding, knowledge, and resources of the Arab American community by celebrating the thoughts and lives of Arab Americans. The purpose of the Award is to inspire authors, educate readers and foster a respect and understanding of the Arab American culture.[1]
The Arab American Book Award was brought about by the Arab American National Museum and faculty members of the nearby University of Toledo. The winning titles are chosen by groups of selected readers including respected authors, university professors, artists and AANM staff. The Awards are given during an invitation only event in the Fall of the award year. The AANM first gave these awards in 2007 for books published in 2006; for 2007, the number of submissions more than doubled from the inaugural year.[2]
To help ensure the continuity of the Arab American Book Award a special endowment fund has been launched with a $10,000 gift from Drs. A. Adnan and Barbara C. Aswad. Dr. Barbara C. Aswad is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and a past president of the Middle Eastern Studies Association and a Board Member Emerita for the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), parent organization of the Arab American National Museum. Dr. A. Adnan Aswad is Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. The Aswads, now based in Los Angeles, were inspired to make the gift after the inaugural Book Award ceremony in Fall 2007.
In 2011, the non-fiction prize was renamed to honor the legacy and contributions to Arab American scholarship of Evelyn Shakir, who died of breast cancer in 2010. In addition to winning the Arab American Book Award for Fiction in 2008, Professor Shakir extensively researched the history of Arab women and wrote the groundbreaking work Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States in 1997. Evelyn's longtime partner, poet George Ellenbogen, established the award in collaboration with the Arab American National Museum.[3]
In 2009, The Arab American Book Award Committee changed the name of the '2008 Arab American Book Award' to the '2009 Arab American Book Award' in order to reflect the true award date instead of the publication date of the winning books. All dates in the previous Award years were also changed retroactively. While the date within the Award name has changed, the rules regarding the publication dates for eligible submissions have not.
| Author(s) | Title | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | In the Country of Men | Winner | [4] | |
| 2008 | Remember Me to Lebanon | Winner | [5] | |
| Origin | Honorable mention | |||
| 2009 | Winner | [6] | ||
| 2010 | Master of the Eclipse: And Other Stories | Winner | [7] | |
| 2011 | Loom: a Novel | Winner | [8] [9] | |
| 2012 | Birds of Paradise | Winner | [10] | |
| Anatomy of a Disappearance | Honorable mention | |||
| 2013 | Lebanese Blonde | Winner | [11] | |
| Flying Carpets | Honorable mention | |||
| 2014 | Winner | [12] | ||
| Honorable mention | ||||
| 2015 | Winner (tie) | [13] [14] | ||
| 2016 | Winner | [15] | ||
| In the Language of Miracles | Honorable mention | |||
| 2017 | The Angel of History | Winner | [16] | |
| 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl | Honorable mention | |||
| 2018 | Salt Houses | Winner | [17] | |
| 2019 | Amreekiya | Winner | [18] | |
| 2020 | Winner | [19] [20] [21] | ||
| Honorable mention | ||||
| 2021 | Against the Loveless World | Winner | [22] | |
| Alligator And Other Stories | Honorable mention | |||
| 2022 | Bride of the Sea | Winner | [23] | |
| 2023 | Winner (tie) | [24] [25] | ||
| If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English |
Prior to 2011, this award was referred to primarily as the Non-Fiction Award.
| Author(s) | Title | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Winner | |||
| Honorable mention | ||||
| “Evil” Arabs in American Popular Film | ||||
| 2008 | Another Arabesque | Winner | ||
| Kisses from a Distance | Honorable mention | |||
| Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens | ||||
| 2009 | How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America | Winner | ||
| Honorable mention | ||||
| Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation | ||||
| 2010 | Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family, Place, and Politics | Winner | ||
| Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11 | Honorable mention | |||
| 2011 | Arab Americans in Toledo: Cultural Assimilation and Community Involvement edited | Winner | ||
| Barefoot in Baghdad | Honorable mention | |||
| 2012 | , Evelyn Alsultany and Nadine Naber (eds.) | Arab and Arab-American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, & Belonging edited | Winner | |
| Modern Arab-American Fiction: A Reader's Guide | Honorable mention | |||
| 2013 | House of Stone A Memoir of Home, Family, and Lost Middle East | Winner | ||
| Honorable mention | ||||
| Even My Voice Is Silence | ||||
| 2014 | and Deborah Al-Najjar | We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War edited | Winner | |
| and Ella Shohat | Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora edited | Honorable mention | ||
| and Maggie Schmitt | ||||
| 2015 | Winner | |||
| 2016 | This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror | Winner (tie) | ||
| and Germine H. Awad | Handbook of Arab American Psychology | |||
| 2017 | Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine | Winner | ||
| Industrial Sexuality: Gender, Urbanization, and Social Transformation in Egypt | Honorable mention | |||
| 2018 | Winner | |||
| Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture | Honorable mention | |||
| 2019 | Syrian and Lebanese Patricios in São Paulo, | Winner | ||
| 2020 | When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family's Forgotten History | Winner (tie) | ||
| Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925 | ||||
| Women of the Midan: The Untold Stories of Egypt's Revolutionaries | Honorable mention | |||
| 2021 | Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California | Winner (tie) | ||
| and Elia Zughaib | Stories My Father Told Me | |||
| Articulations Of Resistance: Transformative Practices in Contemporary Arab American Poetry | Honorable mention | |||
| 2022 | Don't Forget Us Here | Winner (tie) | ||
| Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia | ||||
| , Suad Joseph, and Louise Cainkar | Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal | Honorable mention | ||
| 2023 | Muslims of the Heartland | Winner (tie) | ||
| , Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell (Eds.) | Hadha Baladuna | |||
| Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion | Honorable mention | |||
| , Pauline Homsi Vinson, and Amira Jarmakani (Eds.) | Sajjilu: A Reader in SWANA Studies | Honorable mention | ||
| Learning America: One Woman's Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children | Honorable mention |
| Author(s) | scope=col width="40%" | Title | scope=col width="15%" | Result | scope=col width="5%" class="unsortable" | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | with Ted Lewin (illus.) | One Green Apple | Winner | |||
| 2008 | Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood | Winner | ||||
| 2009 | Honeybee: Poems & Short Prose | Winner | ||||
| 2010 | No winner | |||||
| 2011 | Saving Sky | Winner | ||||
| with Ned Gannon (illus.) | Time to Pray | Honorable mention | ||||
| 2012 | No winner | |||||
| 2013 | and Susan L. Roth | Hands Around the Library: Protecting Egypt's Treasured Books | Winner | |||
| Shatter Me | Honorable mention | |||||
| 2014 | and Maha Addasi | Kids Guide to Arab American History | Winner | |||
| Honorable mention | ||||||
| 2015 | Winner | |||||
| with Claire Ewart (illus.) | Honorable mention | |||||
| 2016 | No Winner | |||||
| 2017 | Winner | |||||
| Honorable mention | ||||||
| Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine | ||||||
| 2018 | No Winner | |||||
| 2019 | I’ve Loved You Since Forever | Winner | ||||
| Mirage | Honorable mention | |||||
| 2020 | I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir | Winner | [26] | |||
| Other Words for Home | Honorable mention | |||||
| 2021 | with Anait Semirdzhyan (illus.) | Winner (tie) | ||||
| Farah Rocks Fifth Grade | ||||||
| 2022 | Home is Not a Country | Winner | ||||
| 2023 | Arab, Arab All Year Long! | Winner (C) | ||||
| , Adam Tlaib, and Miranda Paul | Mama in Congress: Rashida Tlaib's Journey to Washington | Honorable mention (C) | ||||
| Ida in the Middle | Winner (YA) | |||||
| Honorable mention (YA) | ||||||
| Author(s) | Title | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | breaking poems | Winner | ||
| 2010 | Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea | Winner | ||
| 2011 | Tocqueville | Winner | ||
| This Is a Nice Neighborhood | Honorable mention | |||
| 2012 | Abu Ghraib Arias | Winner | ||
| Transfer | Honorable mention | |||
| 2013 | Atrium | Winner | ||
| Sea and Fog | Honorable mention | |||
| 2014 | Winner | |||
| My Daughter La Chola | Honorable mention | |||
| Alight | ||||
| 2015 | Tahrir Suite: Poems | Winner | ||
| And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2003 | Honorable mention | |||
| 2016 | Winner | [27] | ||
| Sand Opera | Honorable mention | |||
| 2017 | Something Sinister | Winner | ||
| One Hundred Hungers | Honorable mention | |||
| Hagar Poems | ||||
| 2018 | Winner | |||
| Water & Salt | Honorable mention | |||
| 2019 | Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance | Winner | ||
| Honorable mention | ||||
| 2020 | Winner | |||
| Invasive Species | Honorable mention | |||
| 2021 | Birthright | Winner | ||
| Washes, Prays | Honorable mention | |||
| 2022 | Winner | |||
| Honorable mention | ||||
| 2023 | O | Winner | ||
| DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. | Honorable mention | |||
| Your Blue and the Quiet Lament |