Books By Portland Authors: Diana Abu-Jaber

Yesterday we were treated to a great interview with Diana Abu-Jaber courtesy of The Writers Dojo, so today I thought it would be great to do a spotlight on her multiple award winning books:

Origin: A Novel

Product Description:
A fingerprint expert’s investigation of a series of crib deaths leads her back to the mystery of her own childhood.

Reviews:
“At the beginning of this wonderful novel, 6-year-old Lena sits with Pia, her foster mother, watching an old Tarzan movie on television. ‘I sat, openmouthed,’ Lena remembers as an adult, ‘watching the man, the woman, the birds, the tiger, the leaves. And finally she was there, the one I’d waited for, had known would come eventually. I jumped up, crying, “Mama! Mama!”‘ Lena’s not pointing to Jane, but… Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)

“Abu-Jaber has created a literary mystery that weaves an intriguing psychological character study with a tense and compelling plot that results in a rewarding finish. Lena is a flawed but appealing protagonist; let’s hope she surfaces in sequels. Recommended.” Library Journal

The Language of Baklava

Product Description:
Diana Abu-Jaber’s vibrant, humorous memoir weaves together stories of being raised by a food-obsessed Jordanian father with tales of Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts and goat stew feasts under Bedouin tents in the desert. These sensuously evoked repasts, complete with recipes, in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana’s childhood — American and Jordanian — while helping to paint a loving and complex portrait of her impractical, displaced immigrant father who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children.

The Language of Baklava irresistably invites us to sit down at the table with Diana’s family, sharing unforgettable meals that turn out to be as much about “grace, difference, faith, love” as they are about food.
Reviews:
“Abu-Jaber’s father, who periodically uprooted his American family to transplant them back in Jordan, was always cooking. Wherever the family was, certain ingredients — sumac, cumin, lamb, pine nuts — reminded him of the wonderful Bedouin meals of his boyhood. He might be eating ‘the shadow of a memory,’ but at least he raised his daughter with an understanding of the importance of food: how you cook and eat, and how you feed your neighbors defines who you are. So Abu-Jaber (Arabian Jazz; Crescent) tells the charming stories of her upbringing in upstate New York — with occasional interludes in Jordan — wrapped around some recipes for beloved Arabic dishes. She includes classics like baklava and shish kebab, but it’s the homier concoctions like bread salad, or the exotically named Magical Muhammara (a delectable-sounding spread) that really impress. While Abu-Jaber’s emphasis is on Arabic food, her memoir touches on universal topics. For example, she tells of a girlhood dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her very American grandmother. Thanks to some comic misunderstandings, the waiter switched her grandmother’s tame order for a more authentic feast. Listening to the grandmother rant about her food-obsessed son-in-law, and watching Abu-Jaber savoring her meal, the waiter nodded knowingly at Abu-Jaber. ‘So you come from cooking,’ he said, summing her up perfectly. Agent, Joy Harris. (Mar. 15) Forecast: Readers who enjoyed Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone or Patricia Volk’s Stuffed will devour Baklava.” Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

“Feasts and celebrations play a huge role, but this exquisite memoir offers much more to the discerning reader. With humor and grace, the author explores timeless topics of love, cultural adjustments and what being rootless means.” Seattle Times

“[A] page-turner, but not in the traditional sense….It’s more that the world described is so strange and sumptuous, the characters so large and comedic, and the descriptions of the food so enveloping and mouth-watering that you want to climb into this world and make it your own.” Oregonian

Crescent

Product Description:
An Arab-American novel as delicious as Like Water for Chocolate.

Praised by critics from The New Yorker to USA Today for her first novel, Arabian Jazz (“an oracular tale that unfurls like gossamer”), Diana Abu-Jaber weaves with spellbinding magic a multidimensional love story set in the Arab-American community of Los Angeles.

Thirty-nine-year-old Sirine, never married, lives with a devoted Iraqi-immigrant uncle and an adoring dog named King Babar. She works as a chef in a Lebanese restaurant, her passions aroused only by the preparation of food — until an unbearably handsome Arabic literature professor starts dropping by for a little home cooking. Falling in love brings Sirene’s whole heart to a boil — stirring up memories of her parents and questions about her identity as an Arab American.

Written in a lush, lyrical style reminiscent of The God of Small Things, infused with the flavors and scents of Middle Eastern food, and spiced with history and fable, Crescent is a sensuous love story and a gripping tale of risk and commitment.

Reviews:
“Abu-Jaber captures this despair with exquisite care, but her heart belongs to romance, not tragedy. The allusions to Othello that waft through the story eventually give way to the uncle’s outlandish fairy tale. This is a tough time to consider the artistic and culinary beauty of Iraq, but as one of the cafe patrons says, ‘Americans need to know about the big, dark, romantic soul of the Arab.’ Readers stuffed on headlines but still hungering for something relevant will enjoy this rich meal.” Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire CSM review)

“A timely fiction about Iraqi intellectuals in Los Angeles blends the whimsy of Scheherazade-style storytelling with the urgency of contemporary politics….What might have been the stuff of any romance is forged into a powerful story about the loneliness of exile and the limits of love. An impressive second outing by Abu-Jaber.” Kirkus Reviews

“[A]sensual feast that surrounds us with a comforting cushion of romantic and culinary delights in contemporary ethnic Los Angeles, then shocks us when the tentacles of Saddam Hussein’s regime reach into this free-spirited world and drag one of the central characters back into Iraq’s malevolent maw.” Pamela Constable, Washington Post

Arabian Jazz

Product Description:
In Diana Abu-Jaber’s “impressive, entertaining” (Chicago Tribune) first novel, a small, poor-white community in upstate New York becomes home to the transplanted Jordanian family of Matussem Ramoud: his grown daughters, Jemorah and Melvina; his sister Fatima; and her husband, Zaced. The widower Matuseem loves American jazz, kitschy lawn ornaments, and, of course, his daughters. Fatima is obsessed with seeing her nieces married–Jemorah is nearly thirty! Supernurse Melvina is firmly committed to her work, but Jemorah is ambivalent about her identity and role. Is she Arab? Is she American? Should she marry and, if so, whom? Winner of the Oregon Book Award and finalist for the National PEN/Hemingway Award, Arabian Jazz is “a joy to read…. You will be tempted to read passages out loud. And you should” (Boston Globe). USA Today praises Abu-Jaber’s “gift for dialogue … her Arab-American rings musically, and hilariously, true.”

Reviews:
You’re an Arab-American writing about your community in your first novel. Should you go for a comic/satirical treatment? Do something more serious, emphasizing cultural displacement? Or broaden your canvas to include the white, nonethnic neighbors? Abu- Jaber has tried all three tacks and been overwhelmed in the process. The Ramoud family, father and two grown daughters, live in a small town in upstate New York and work at the same hospital in Syracuse. The father, Matussem, emigrated from Jordan as a young man and fell in love with and married Nora, an Irish-American who interpreted his new country for him. Since her death from typhus on a trip to Jordan, the gentle, passive Matussem has found a refuge in jazz (he’s a drummer with his own group) and caring for his daughters. The younger, Melvina, is no problem; only 22, she’s already Head Nurse. But Jemorah, the protagonist by default in this plotless novel, is another story. Stuck in a clerical job she hates, Jem’s pushing 30 and still single, which is driving her Aunt Fatima nuts. (Fatima, whose life’s ambition is to join the worthy Arab matrons on the Ladies’ Pontifical Committee, is the main satirical target here.) None of Jem’s three possible mates is very plausible. There’s Gilbert Sesame, a fast-talking pool hustler who’s here one minute, gone the next; Ricky Ellis, a local grease monkey with whom Jem makes love in the bushes; and cousin Nassir, fresh from Jordan, who warns Jem about her extended family, “a cult organization.” Eventually, after two crudely engineered encounters with bigots, she decides that postgraduate research into race prejudice is the answer. The other elements in this mishmash (visiting Jordanians on a credit-card rampage, poor whites tormenting themselves with coathangers and booze) only add to the confusion. — Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This oracular first novel, which unfurls like gossamer [has] characters of a depth seldom found in a debut. — The New Yorker

[A] joy to read…. You will be tempted to read passages out loud. And you should. — Boston Globe