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| photo: Nadia Roumani | |
Rhonda Roumani is an award-winning Syrian American author and journalist. She is the author of the middle-grade book Tagging Freedom (Union Square, 2023), which received an Arab American Book Award honor, as well as the picture book Insha'Allah, No, Maybe So (Holiday House, 2024), which was named a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. Her nonfiction picture book, Umm Kulthum: The Star of the East, is now available from Interlink Publishing. She lives in New Haven, Conn., with her husband and two kids.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
It is a biography about the daughter of a poor sheikh who shattered conventions with her powerful voice to become the Arab world's greatest singer.
On your nightstand now:
Fledgling by S.K. Ali
Libertad by Bessie Flores Zaldívar
Girls That Never Die: Poems by Safia Elhillo
Let Me Hear a Rhyme by Tiffany D. Jackson
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Favorite book when you were a child:
Romana Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary. I absolutely loved all the Ramona books. They were the reason I started reading and the only series that I ever read more than once when I was young. Ramona was a character I could relate to, even though I was nothing like her. I was the eldest daughter of Muslim immigrant parents from Syria. If anything, I was much more like Beezus, her rule-following, quieter older sister. But, still, Ramona spoke to me. I loved her spunky personality: she was mischievous, curious, and a troublemaker. Maybe, deep down, I wished I was more like her. Or maybe, Ramona did all the things I never dared do. I could relate to her big tears and big feelings. She was real and unreserved. I absolutely loved her.
Your top five authors:
Ta-Nehisi Coates: I admire him both as a journalist and as a writer. He's curious, which leads to real intellectual honesty. His writing is gorgeous and poignant and raw and real. Just one of the most brilliant writers and thinkers I've read.
Safia Elhillo: I simply love her poetry and her novels in verse. Her book Home Is Not a Country grappled with questions that I obsessed over for years.
Jason Reynolds: A great storyteller. So fun to read; his words jump off the page. I see my son's eyes light up when I read his books with him. He's maybe the best middle-grade author out there today.
Viet Thanh Nguyen: I think he is one of the most important thinkers of our day. The Sympathizer is perfection.
Hala Alyan: A beautiful, powerful writer and poet. Her characters are so authentic. I love how she writes about generational issues and the ways families are connected and interact through time and places.
Book you've faked reading:
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I carried it around when I was a pre-teen. I have no idea why.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. As someone who has always been a minority in majority cultures--in the U.S. and even in Syria--this book is everything. The writing is perfect: a sweeping family drama, woven together with such seamless ease. I am the daughter of Syrian immigrants living in the United States. In Damascus, my family was one of the few Shi'a families in our city. Although I didn't really identify as Shi'a, I was constantly in the position of hearing how others spoke about the parts of my identity that were not the majority culture. So, even as the daughter of minority immigrants from Syria, I found myself relating to a Korean family growing up in Japan. Lee says she had this book in her for 30 years. Sometimes the best books need time. I think this is one of those books.
Book you hid from your parents:
I didn't need to hide books from my parents because they had no idea what I was reading.
Books that changed your life:
Orientalism by Edward Said and The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. I don't think I can choose only one because both spoke to me as the daughter of Muslim Arab immigrants raised in the United States. Orientalism gave me the framework with which to understand how the West viewed the Arab world. The Autobiography of Malcolm X helped me better understand the country I was growing up in--to connect the way Islam became the means to fight injustice in the face of colonial histories both in the United States and abroad. Malcolm X became the first American figure I truly looked up to and the first figure I wanted to know everything about.
Favorite line from a book:
"I was that man of two minds, me and myself. We had been through so much, me and myself. Everyone we met had wanted to drive us apart from each other, wanted us to choose either one thing or another, except the commissar. He showed us his hand and we showed him ours, the red scars as indelible as they were in our youth. Even after all we had been through, this was the only mark on our body." --from The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
Top nine children's dooks--four picture books and five middle-grade--I wish I had as a kid:
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander--I was basketball-obsessed.
Amina's Voice by Hena Khan--First traditionally published middle-grade book with a Muslim main character where the subject was not about war.
Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi--I know that this book is about the Muslim ban, but the Syrian representation is perfect.
I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib--This graphic novel would have spoken to me as the daughter of Arab immigrants on so many levels.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead--I think this is the perfect middle-grade book.
Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine by Hannah Moushabeck--Palestine was always a subject of conversation in our home, so seeing a book about Palestine would have helped me feel seen.
Eleven Words for Love by Randa Abdel-Fattah, illustrated by Maxine Beneba Clarke--Arabic words being represented in the ways that I heard them growing up!
Dear Muslim Child by Rahma Rodaah, illustrated by Aya Ghanameh--This love letter to me as a Muslim child would have meant everything.
The Book That Almost Rhymed by Omar Abed, illustrated by Hatem Aly--Arab authors, a brilliant book, and the characters look a bit like us! It's one of the most perfect picture books I've ever read.