The Many Faces of April: Mirrors and Windows
In our last edition of First Words, I wrote about April being Poetry Month. But April is also lots of other things as well. It’s National Brunch Month, National Financial Literacy Month, and National Pickleball Month. Also National Landscape Architecture Month (that’s a good one for Swarthmore!) and Canine Fitness Month. It’s National Fair Housing Month, which is close to my heart (yes, we’re going to have a special “Housing and Zoning” shelf at Celia Bookshop).
In preparing to open our store, owner Beth Murray and I took an online course from the Professional Booksellers School. It gave us a useful overview of what we’ll be doing and was a great way to connect with other booksellers across the country.
One thing we learned—no big surprise—is that books stuck on the shelf with their spines facing the shopper, don’t sell nearly as well as books laid out on tables or set on shelves face out. Even better is to display the books in appealing arrangements. Our final class project was to construct a display on any topic we liked. We were to use both books and non-book items like stickers, cards, or stuffed animals. Also “shelf-talkers”—those small personal signs that tell you why you should read a particular book. Here’s mine, made from things I had around the house.
Mirrors and Windows
One of the delights of reading is the way a book can take you to a place you’ve never been–a place that might not even exist. Reading can help you imagine yourself into lives very different from your own.
The great children’s literature scholar Rudine Sims Bishop talked about books as “mirrors” and “windows.” As mirrors, books reflect readers back to themselves, helping them see themselves as part of the larger human experience. As windows–or even better, as sliding glass doors–books enable readers to step through into places and lives that are new to them.
I love book displays of all kinds, but the ones that honor certain heritages are special. In addition to being mirrors for members of that community, heritage month displays give visibility to those who may feel invisible, and show that they are valued and welcome. At the same time, they offer people not from that background a wealth of sliding glass doors to choose among. Which brings me to this:
April Is Also Arab-American Heritage Month!
To celebrate, we have put together a list of books by and about Arab-Americans on our Bookshop.org page for you to browse and shop. The list includes kids’ books, poetry, a cookbook, and even a graphic novel.
Here’s a sampling of some of my favorites, two novels and a children’s book. As usual, I’ll take a look at each book’s first lines and ask what that opening might tell us about the pages to come.
Recommendations
By Betty Shamieh
It was not that September 11 felt like just another day in New York to me. It’s that I had to pretend it wasn’t. I was only traumatized by how little I was traumatized. If you were thinking about hating me already, don’t worry. You’re in great company. Also, try as you might, you can’t hate me more than I hate myself.
These bodacious first lines suggest a narrator (and writer) unafraid of standing out–someone who’d rather be memorable than likeable. I predict, though, that you will like them if you give them a chapter or two. Arabella, the first of the three narrators in this funny, smart, complicated novel, is a downtown New York theater director known for staging Shakespeare’s comedies as tragedies and vice versa.
This is not the first book I’ve read tracing generations of Palestinian women, but to my ear it’s the liveliest, most complex, and most sophisticated one yet. Which isn’t to say that bad things don’t happen: they do (like the Nakba). But sharp-edged and passionate Arabella, her Detroit-bred mother who used to hang out with some Black Panthers, and her tough-as-nails grandmother who survived displacement and is trying to set Arabella up with the grandson of her own former crush back in Jaffa, are all differently surprising and irreverent guides to Palestinian-American life. Also to Shakespeare, race in America, friendships between Jews and Palestinians, and to how a modern woman might deal with a ticking biological clock.
By Hisham Matar
It is, of course, impossible to be certain of what is contained in anyone’s chest, least of all one’s own or those we know well, perhaps especially those we know best, but, as I stand here on the upper level of King’s Cross Station, from where I can monitor my old friend Hosam Zowa walking across the concourse, I feel I am seeing right into him, perceiving him more accurately than ever before, as though all along, during the two decades that we have known one another, our friendship has been a study and now, ironically, just after we have bidden each other farewell, his portrait is finally coming into view.
This very long first sentence suggests the complexities of the thoughts inside the mind of the narrator here, a young student from Libya who stumbles into a dangerous political event and spends the rest of his life pondering the meaning and effect of the experience. I promise you the prose is mostly easier to follow, though.
This opening locates us immediately and deeply in London, and I love a good London novel. It also suggests that friendship and the human heart will be major subjects. It tells us that much time will pass.
I also think this sentence tells us that its author trusts us to have patience with his character, Khaled. This young man must struggle to sort out what becomes of his life after he makes one rash (or brave) move and finds himself stranded in London, unable to go home.
Khaled, the first sentence suggests, is a careful and nuanced thinker. Maybe he’s even an over-thinker. But his mind is an interesting place, always searching, always trying to see through the vexing, confusing, and potentially dangerous surfaces of life to what lies inside. It was a pleasure to give myself over to Matar’s thoughtful, perceptive voice, letting it guide me through questions which seem increasingly relevant to our own lives: How do ordinary people behave in politically dangerous times?
Written by Cathy Camper, Illustrated by Sawsan Chalabi
In our houses,
on the sidewalk,
in the country,
and downtown,
we’re exploring, sharing,
making things
all year round.
This joyful book of months follows an Arab-American family across the year. In January, they gaze at the night sky, identifying stars with Arabic names as they make New Year’s wishes. In April, they bake maamoul with pistachios and dates for Easter. In August, they play the doumbek drum at a summer festival.
The colors in these pages are bright, the faces are smiling, and headscarves and keffiyehs are sometimes worn as families sing and hug and play. Parents and grandparents hand down traditions they have brought with them across oceans, inviting the new generation to make them their own.
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