What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Complete Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi · 352 pages
From inside front cover: The story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a ... loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a coutnry plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming -- both sweet and terrible; and, fina
Do They Hear You When You Cry?
Fauziya Kassindja, Layli Miller Bashir, Fauziya Kasinga · 518 pages
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi · 368 pages
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Azar Nafisi, a bold and inspired teacher, secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; some had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to
Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil
Deborah Rodriguez · 275 pages
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills--as doctors, nurses, and therapists--seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb · 311 pages
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous re
The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman's Journey to Love and Islam
G. Willow Wilson · 304 pages
Documents the author's conversion from all-American atheist to Islam, a journey marked by her decision to relocate to Cairo, romance with a passionate young Egyptian, and her efforts to balance the virtues of both cultures.
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer · 438 pages
In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths
West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story
Tamim Ansary, Mir Tamim Ansary · 292 pages
"The day after Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an anguished e-mail to twenty friends, discussing the attack from his perspective as an Afghan American. That message, spreading via the Internet, reached and touched millions of people around the world." "Now Ansary gives us West of Kabul, East of New York, an account of a life lived in two very
Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth, Olive Gilbert · 144 pages
"A symbol of the strength of African-American women, and a champion of the rights of all women, Sojourner Truth was an illiterate former slave named Isabella who became a vastly powerful orator. Dictated to a neighbor and first published in 1850, Truth's celebrated story chronicles her life as a slave in New York State, her 1827 emancipation under state law, her religious experiences and her trans
Inside The Kingdom: My Life In Saudi Arabia
Carmen Bin Ladin · 219 pages
"On September 11, 2001, Carmen Bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her daughters would never be the same again." "In 1974 Carmen, half-Swiss and half-Persian, married into the Bin Laden family.
The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith
Joanna Brooks · 209 pages
Story about leaving behind the innocence of childhood belief and embracing the complications and heartbreaks that come to every adult life of faith. Explores the author's journey through her faith, and the experience of being a Mormon.
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah · 297 pages
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often ab
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt · 384 pages
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish im
Escape
Carolyn Jessop, Laura Palmer · 426 pages
The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman's courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral par
The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left
Ed Husain · 294 pages
The true story of one mans journey to Islamic fundamentalism and backRaised in a devout but quiet Muslim community in London, at sixteen Ed Husain was presented with an intriguing political interpretation of Islam known as fundamentalism. Lured by these ideas, he committed his life to them. Five years later, he rejected extremism and tried to return to a normal life. But soon he realized that Isla
Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age Story
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh · 144 pages
"At nine years old, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh watched from her home in New Jersey as two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. That same year, she heard her first racial slur. At age eleven, when the United States began their invasion in Iraq and the television was flooded with anti-Muslim commentary, Amani felt overwhelmed with feelings of intense alienation from American so
In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom
Qanta A. Ahmed · 454 pages
The decisions that change your life are often the most impulsive ones. Unexpectedly denied a visa to remain in the United States, Qanta Ahmed, a young British Muslim doctor, becomes an outcast in motion. On a whim, she accepts an exciting position in Saudi Arabia. This is not just a new job; this is a chance at adventure in an exotic land she thinks she understands, a place she hopes she will belo
Secret Ceremonies: A Mormon Woman's Intimate Diary of Marriage and Beyond
Deborah Laake · 240 pages
In this book, Deborah Laake, a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, chronicles her experiences with Mormonism and the various rituals performed in their temples. Laake recounts her studies at the Brigham Young University, her loveless first marriage at nineteen, her subsequent divorce and the problems she encountered with the Mormon authorities and her relatives due to
Unorthodox : Mi Verdadera Historia / Unorthodox
Deborah Feldman · 416 pages
Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation
Eboo Patel · 189 pages
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 484 pages
Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes
Kamal Al-Solaylee · 204 pages
A true story of life in the modern Middle-East spanning the nearly six decades from the nationalism of the 1960s to the Arab Spring of 2011, by a prominent Canadian journalist. In the '60s, Al-Solayee's father was one of the wealthiest property owners in Aden, south of Yemen, but when the country shrugged off its colonial roots, his properties were confiscated. As a gay man living in an intolerant
God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir
John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney · 295 pages
"Lost Boy" John Bul Dau's harrowing experience surviving the brutal horrors of Sudanese civil war and his adjustment to life in modern America is chronicled in this inspiring memoir and featured in an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Movingly written, the book traces Dau's journey through hunger, exhaustion, terror, and violence as he fled his homeland, dodging ambushes, massacres