Alia Malek is an author and civil rights lawyer. Born in Baltimore to Syrian immigrant parents, she began her legal career as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justices Civil Rights Division. After working in the legal field in the U.S., Lebanon, and the West Bank, Malek, who has degrees from Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, earned her masters degree in journalism from Columbia University. Her reportage has appeared in Salon, The Columbia Journalism Review, and The New York Times. A Country Called Amreeka is her first book.

About 'A Country Called Amreeka'
Among the surfeit of narratives about Arabs that have been published in recent years, surprisingly little has been reported on Arabs in America  an increasingly relevant issue. This book is the most powerful approach imaginable: it is the story of the last forty-plus years of American history, told through the eyes of Arab Americans. It begins in 1963, before major federal legislative changes seismically transformed the course of American immigration forever. Each chapter describes an event in U.S. history  which may already be familiar to us  and invites us to live that moment in time in the skin of one Arab American. The chapters follow a timeline from 1963 to the present, and the characters live in every corner of this country.

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Country-Called-Amreeka/Alia-Malek/9781416592686

http://www.acountrycalledamreeka.com/

Light refreshments will be served.