From Publishers Weekly
Abu-Jaber's father, who periodically uprooted his American family to transplant them back in Jordan, was always cooking. Wherever the family was, certain ingredients—sumac, cumin, lamb, pine nuts—reminded him of the wonderful Bedouin meals of his boyhood. He might be eating "the shadow of a memory," but at least he raised his daughter with an understanding of the importance of food: how you cook and eat, and how you feed your neighbors defines who you are. So Abu-Jaber (Arabian Jazz; Crescent) tells the charming stories of her upbringing in upstate New York—with occasional interludes in Jordan—wrapped around some recipes for beloved Arabic dishes. She includes classics like baklava and shish kebab, but it's the homier concoctions like bread salad, or the exotically named Magical Muhammara (a delectable-sounding spread) that really impress. While Abu-Jaber's emphasis is on Arabic food, her memoir touches on universal topics. For example, she tells of a girlhood dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her very American grandmother. Thanks to some comic misunderstandings, the waiter switched her grandmother's tame order for a more authentic feast. Listening to the grandmother rant about her food-obsessed son-in-law, and watching Abu-Jaber savoring her meal, the waiter nodded knowingly at Abu-Jaber. "So you come from cooking," he said, summing her up perfectly. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* In her novels Arabian Jazz (1993) and crescent (2003), Abu-Jaber wrote luminous, heart-stopping fiction about Arab Americans. Here she chronicles her own growing up as the oldest daughter of an American mother and her exuberant Jordanian father, Bud, who, like his large crowd of siblings, aches for his birth county. "I sense a deep weirdness about my own existence in the world," she writes. "How could these two people have ever found each other?" Bud is a passionate cook, and as in Crescent, the intoxicating power of good food forms a sublime current through the story, with recipes anchoring each chapter. Abu-Jaber writes about the profound disorientation of both childhood and the immigrant experience with the same acute insight, poignancy, and expertly timed, self-deprecating comic narration. Recollections about family, fitting in, and the author's struggles to become a writer read like polished, self-contained short stories, both familiar and enchantingly exotic. But beneath the amusing, generous personal stories are "deeper, formless questions": Do people "have to decide who they are and where exactly their home is? How many lives are we allowed?" Abu-Jaber's sly, poetic precision will leave readers breathless. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
From the acclaimed author of Crescent, called “radiant, wise, and passionate” by the Chicago Tribune, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook. Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts with her Arab-American cousins to goat stew feasts under a Bedouin tent in the desert. These sensuously evoked meals in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana’s childhood–American and Jordanian–and the
richness and difficulty of straddling both. They also bring her wonderfully eccentric family to life, most memorably her imperious American grandmother and her impractical, hotheaded, displaced immigrant father, who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children.

As she does in her fiction, Diana draws us in with her exquisite insight and compassion, and with her amazing talent for describing food and the myriad pleasures and adventures associated with cooking and eating. Each chapter contains mouthwatering recipes for many of the dishes described, from her Middle Eastern grandmother’s Mad Genius Knaffea to her American grandmother’s Easy Roast Beef, to her aunt Aya’s Poetic Baklava. The Language of Baklava gives us the chance not only to grow up alongside Diana, but also to share meals with her every step of the way–unforgettable feasts that teach her, and us, as much about iden-tity, love, and family as they do about food.

About the Author
Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Crescent, 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 twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor, and Arabian Jazz, which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She teaches at Portland State University and divides her time between Portland and Miami.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"From the acclaimed author of Crescent, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook. Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts with her Arab-American cousins to goat stew feasts under a Bedouin tent in the desert. These sensuously evoked meals in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana's childhood - American and Jordanian - and the richness and difficulty of straddling both. They also bring her wonderfully eccentric family to life, most memorably her imperious American grandmother and her impractical, hotheaded, displaced immigrant father, who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children." As she does in her fiction, Diana draws us in with her insight and compassion, and with her talent for describing food and the myriad pleasures and adventures associated with cooking and eating. Each chapter contains mouth-watering recipes for many of the dishes described, from her Middle Eastern grandmother's Mad Genius Knaffea to her American grandmother's Easy Roast Beef, to her aunt Aya's Poetic Baklava. The Language of Baklava gives us the chance not only to grow up alongside Diana, but also to share meals with her every step of the way - unforgettable feasts that teach her, and us, as much about identity, love, and family as they do about food.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Abu-Jaber's father, who periodically uprooted his American family to transplant them back in Jordan, was always cooking. Wherever the family was, certain ingredients-sumac, cumin, lamb, pine nuts-reminded him of the wonderful Bedouin meals of his boyhood. He might be eating "the shadow of a memory," but at least he raised his daughter with an understanding of the importance of food: how you cook and eat, and how you feed your neighbors defines who you are. So Abu-Jaber (Arabian Jazz; Crescent) tells the charming stories of her upbringing in upstate New York-with occasional interludes in Jordan-wrapped around some recipes for beloved Arabic dishes. She includes classics like baklava and shish kebab, but it's the homier concoctions like bread salad, or the exotically named Magical Muhammara (a delectable-sounding spread) that really impress. While Abu-Jaber's emphasis is on Arabic food, her memoir touches on universal topics. For example, she tells of a girlhood dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her very American grandmother. Thanks to some comic misunderstandings, the waiter switched her grandmother's tame order for a more authentic feast. Listening to the grandmother rant about her food-obsessed son-in-law, and watching Abu-Jaber savoring her meal, the waiter nodded knowingly at Abu-Jaber. "So you come from cooking," he said, summing her up perfectly. Agent, Joy Harris. (Mar. 15) Forecast: Readers who enjoyed Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone or Patricia Volk's Stuffed will devour Baklava. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Novelist Abu-Jaber's (Crescent) Jordanian father tried to re-create his culture in upstate New York with his American wife and three daughters. His intense bouts of homesickness led to several upheavals in Abu-Jaber's childhood, including a year "back home" in Jordan. One of the few constants in her life was the emotional and physical nourishment provided by food, both Arab and American. Abu-Jaber traces her life to early adulthood, as she struggles to find an identity that can incorporate the pressure of being a "good Arab girl" with the desire to be a confident American woman. Often overwhelmed by her charming but unpredictable father and his extensive clan of relatives, she slowly becomes her own person, embracing aspects of both cultures. For many immigrants, food is a key connection to their homeland, and Abu-Jaber makes the connection with recipes at the end of each chapter, including Arab classics like tabbouleh and magloubeh. An enjoyable read with evocative descriptions of the immigrant experience and Arab American culture; For public libraries and Arab American collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/02.]-Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews