Let's Talk About Palestine: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
2024-07-13 | Contact for Location, See above for contact
For anyone who wants to learn, discuss and understand Palestine.
Next meeting we are reading A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall.

We will send out a location via the listserve ASAP.

Please sign up here if you are interested: https://forms.gle/eFxQ5Ps6JbJfAYAE8
Our first book started in the present:
we read and discussed with the author, Nada Elia, her book: Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter.Nationalism, and Palestine
We met on Saturday, January 13th. You can order a copy from my ArabishWay page on bookshop.org

Then we read Rashid Khalidi’s book Hundred Years War.
And then we read Mohammed Elkurd’s book of poems, Rifqa and Ghassan Khanafani, Men in the Sun

6-week public reading circle: Middle Eastern feminist voices for liberation
2024-08-05 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-08-12 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-08-19 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Contact Host for Location Details
Explore women’s multi-faceted realities in different parts of the Middle East. Readings will include historic and modern-day writings that examine the challenges confronted by Arab, Iranian and Kurdish feminists and how they organize. Hear from Middle Eastern women about how they view true liberation. Discuss the role of U.S. feminists in building international solidarity. Get a window into the politics and cultures of this crucial region. Everyone welcome.

Global Issues Book Group: Elliot Bay Book Company
2024-09-10 18:30 - 19:30 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Global Issues Book Group
Tuesday, September 10 6:30 p.m.
The Return

WINNER OF THE 2017 PULITZER PRIZE: from Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Hisham Matar, a memoir of his journey home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father’s disappearance.

Scifi/Fantasy Book Club: This is How You Lose the Time War
2025-01-08 18:30 - 19:30 | Brick and Mortar Bookstore, 7430 164th Ave NE - Suite B105, Redmond, WA, 98052, United States
Join us for scifi/fantasy book club! Our selection this month is This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Scifi/fantasy book club aims to read a wide selection of science fiction and fantasy works. We love being transported to other worlds, and hope you will, too!

Scifi/Fantasy Book Club: This is How You Lose the Time War
Wednesday Jan 8th, 2025, 6:30 PM-7:30 PM

Ya Hala Cafe and Retail Space: Critical Convos: Perfect Victims
2025-04-05 13:00 - 15:00 | Suzanne Zahr, Art & Architecture, 2441 76th Ave SE, Ste 160, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States
Remember, Ya Hala’s café and retail space is open to all on weekends this April, Fridays 5-9p, Saturdays and Sundays 10a-1p.
📣 IMPORTANT: Some events will require registration/RSVP so you can save a spot!
Take a look ahead at the calendar and then keep an eye out for links to sign up for specific events. You won’t want to miss out.
More details about each weekend’s events will drop on the Monday before. 👀

Ya Hala Cafe and Retail Space: What is Land Day?
2025-04-06 13:00 - 15:00 | Suzanne Zahr, Art & Architecture, 2441 76th Ave SE, Ste 160, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States

Ya Hala Cafe and Retail Space: Heritage Hour: Create Your Own Tatreez
2025-04-13 13:00 - 15:00 | Suzanne Zahr, Art & Architecture, 2441 76th Ave SE, Ste 160, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States

Ya Hala Cafe and Retail Space: Open Mic
2025-04-20 13:00 - 15:00 | Suzanne Zahr, Art & Architecture, 2441 76th Ave SE, Ste 160, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States

Ya Hala Cafe and Retail Space: Hakawati
2025-04-26 13:00 - 15:00 | Suzanne Zahr, Art & Architecture, 2441 76th Ave SE, Ste 160, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States

Ya Hala Cafe and Retail Space: Arab Heritage Month Event + Activities
2025-04-27 10:00 - 14:00 | Suzanne Zahr, Art & Architecture, 2441 76th Ave SE, Ste 160, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States

Contemporary Translated Works Book Group: Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah, Translated by Barbara Romaine
2025-05-21 11:30 - 13:00 | Virtual
Join the Contemporary Translated Works Book Group – Now Monthly!
Mechanics’ Institute, in partnership with the Center for the Art of Translation and our new presenting partner, Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum, is thrilled to announce the expansion of the Contemporary Translated Works Book Group into a monthly, member-led series! Beginning Spring 2025, we will host lunchtime discussions (12:00–1:00 pm PT) online via Zoom on the third Wednesday of each month, featuring thought-provoking literary selections from around the world.
Four young, Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are tasked, on account of their heritage, with profiling one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba, the violent expulsion of native Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. The old man has no desire to be interviewed, no desire for his memories to be preserved, no desire to serve as an inspiration for the youth of tomorrow. As threats from the team’s editor-in-chief put more and more pressure on the journalists, they must decide just how far they’re willing to go to get the old man on the record.
Join us at 11:30 AM for a Q&A with the translator before the discussion at 12:00 PM.
Free to Folio members.
Learn more and get tickets >>
Order Sand-Catcher >>

Elliott Bay Book Group: Afterlife by Abdulrazak Gurmah
2025-07-01 18:30 - 20:30 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa.
“A work of extraordinary power, giving us a colonial world with utmost intimacy, capturing its cruelties and complexities, immersing us in vividly evoked characters, showing us moments of incredible tenderness and beauty, and quietly reordering our sense of history.” —Phil Klay, author of Redeployment

Seattle Latinx Bookclub - My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter
2025-09-27 | TBA
This month we’ll be discussing Aja Monet’s poetry collection, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter. Powerful, poetic meditations on motherhood, sisterhood, spirituality, solidarity, displacement/gentrification, racism, and sexism. As always, our number one priority is creating comunidad. So please feel free to attend even if you didn’t get a chance to finish the book this month.
Nos vemos pronto!
Where to find the book
You can find a copy of their book on Bookshop.org here
Purchase through Estelita’s Library‘s Bookshop.org storefront, and you’ll support Seattle’s local Black/Brown-owned justice-focused community bookstore & lending library.
You can also find the book at Seattle Public Library in print, ebook, and audiobook formats.
About the Book
The poetry collection, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter is poet Aja Monet’s ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters–the tiny gods who fight to change the world. Textured with the sights and sounds of growing up in East New York in the nineties, to school on the South Side of Chicago, all the way to the olive groves of Palestine, these stunning poems tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, heartbreak, and grief, but also love, motherhood, spirituality, and Black joy.
About the Author
Of Cuban-Jamaican descent, Aja Monet is an internationally established poet, performer, singer, songwriter, educator, and human rights advocate. Monet is also the youngest person to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title.
