![]() ![]() ![]() Yuksel and Hatem Aly, that’s exactly what happened.Īya initially went into journalism to help shift the narrative around Muslims before doing a Masters in education. But alongside books like Reem Faruqi’s Laila’s Lunchbox and In My Mosque by M. “Never in a million years would I have thought that I’d be walking into a Target, Barnes & Noble or library and seeing a book like The Night Before Eid,” Aya said. Our identity and language are important – we need to own our culture" I want them to feel empowered, be unapologetic about who they are and know that their stories matter. "Arabs, immigrants or anybody who’s ever felt like they stood out from the majority. I was a teenager when 9/11 happened,” Aya explains. I never had that – everything was so negative. “When you’re little, you want to see people who look like you, dress like you or have the same name as you in books or on TV. Growing up, Arab representation was sparse. ![]() It’s a statistic author Aya Khalil is working to address with her children’s books The Arabic Quilt, The Night Before Eid and the forthcoming The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale.īorn in Zagazig, Egypt, Aya immigrated to the US when she was one. In 2021, just 0.65% of children’s books published by US authors were by or about Arab characters according to the CCBC, despite the fact that 3.7 million Americans can trace their roots to an Arab country. ![]()
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