Wednesday, April 20, at Books and Books, 265 Aragon Ave., in Coral Gables. If you come from immigrant parents who don't read the language that you write in, you are really freed up to say a lot more in your writing.'ĭiana Abu-Jaber will appear in conversation with Ana Menendez 8 p.m. But I think this is probably true for a lot of writers. 'I couldn't safely say what I was thinking out loud, because I had to be good all the time. 'Honestly, I think that's one of the reasons why I became a writer,' Abu-Jaber says. For his daughter, this was not necessarily a bad thing. 'I had to ban him from coming to my readings,' she says, laughing.Īs proud as her father was of her career, Abu-Jaber says, he was mostly unfamiliar with the content of her books, as he never learned to read English fluently. He was, his daughter recalls during the interview, 'bursting with pride' over her success as a writer, and Bud became a familiar figure at her readings, going so far as to intercept questions from the audience. Reading it can have a similar effect, particularly when it comes to Bud, who, Abu-Jaber writes, 'was big-mouthed and overbearing and generally seemed twice as large as he really was.' Embedded in that largeness was a strong sense of loyalty, responsibility and family. She will appear April 20 at Books and Books in Coral Gables and May 12 at the Fort Lauderdale Barnes and Noble.) (Abu-Jaber has lived in Coral Gables and Pompano Beach, and recently bought a home in Fort Lauderdale with her husband, Scott. In the books, the family is orbited by a clanging asteroid belt of uncles, aunts, cousins and in-laws, each trying to make sense of not only one another, but of life as immigrants and outsiders in New York, Jordan and, eventually, Florida. Overseeing it all was her strict, Jordanian-born, Muslim father, Ghassen Saleh, better known as 'Bud,' and her agreeable American mother, Patty, herself raised by a German-Catholic spitfire named Grace. This week, Abu-Jaber is publishing her latest act of insubordination, 'Life Without a Recipe.' Her second memoir, the book follows 2005's 'The Language of Baklava,' which introduced readers to the author's large and sometimes suffocating family.

Allow me to introduce you to my husband, daughter, four novels and two memoirs. Choose between a family and a writing career? OK. Let's throw a coed literary salon filled with high-school classmates in the back yard. Like all great rebels, Abu-Jaber has sought creative ways to defy authority.

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