Author Diana Abu-Jaber on The Language of Baklava
Award-Winning Author Diana Abu-Jaber to Share Stories from The Language of BaklavaFree Author’s Event to Feature Middle Eastern Pastries – and Baklava!
Presented by Friends of the Needham Public Library
Free and open to the public
Sunday, October 16, 2005, 2:00 p.m.
North Hill auditorium, 865 Central Ave., Needham. (Park in a Visitor parking space and enter through the main door.)
In a celebration of food, family and Middle Eastern culture, the Friends of the Needham Public Library is sponsoring a free author’s event featuring award-winning author Diana Abu-Jaber on Sunday, October 16, 2005, 2:00pm, at the North Hill auditorium, 865 Central Avenue, Needham, Mass. Copies of her new book The Language of Baklava – A Memoir (Pantheon, 2005) will be available for signing.
Book Jacket, The Language of Baklava
“My childhood was made up of stories – the memories and recollections of my Jordanian father’s history and the storybook myths and legends that my mother brought me to read. The stories were often in some way about food, and the food always turned out to be in some way about something much larger: grace, difference, faith, love,” said Abu-Jaber. “My book ‘The Language of Baklava’ is a compilation of family stories as it traces the ways we grew into ourselves.”
“We are delighted to have an author of Abu-Jaber’s stature here in Needham. Her stories reveal the joys and sorrows of the immigrant experience – a quintessentially American experience – and remind us how much we all have in common,” said Catherine Marenghi, president of the Friends of the Needham Public Library.
Baklava and other Middle Eastern pastries and refreshments will be served at the event. “Memories give our lives their fullest shape, and eating together helps us to remember,” Abu-Jaber commented.
About the Author
Diana Abu-Jaber
In addition to “The Language of Baklava,” Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Crescent (Norton, 2004), which was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award and was named one of the 20 best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor; and Arabian Jazz (Norton, 2003), which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She is writer-in-residence and associate professor at Portland State University, Portland Ore., and divides her time between Portland and Miami. This is her web site.
Further information about the event may be obtained by contacting Catherine Marenghi, Friends of the Needham Public Library, (781) 449-8591, cmarenghi@comcast.net.
For general information about programs sponsored by the Friends of the Library, plus the schedule of future programs, click here.