Jordan Salama

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Jordan Salama

In my neighborhood, everyone knows the corners where migrants wait for work. I live in Jackson Heights, Queens, where you can’t so much as step out the door without hearing a language other than English. Newcomers arrive in waves and settle like layers of sediment. On my block, there’s a contingent of elderly Polish ladies who have been living in their century-old co-ops for decades.

2 months ago | nationalgeographic.com | Jordan Salama |Sarah Pabst

“Can you hear that?” Damián Guttlein sat at his kitchen table on a recent winter afternoon in Buenos Aires. The 52-year-old held in his hands an old instrument, resembling an accordion, called a bandoneon. As he tested its sound, he tapped on one of the bandoneon’s many buttons and pulled slightly, giving it air, letting it breathe. “Can you hear it’s off?” he said. The note sounded like two notes at once, slightly dissonant.

Jan 5, 2025 | newyorker.com | Jordan Salama

Elvira, a forty-nine-year-old mother of eight and grandmother of five, didn’t use social media before María and another daughter, Mercedes, left home. She didn’t even have a smartphone until the pandemic, when Ecuador switched to virtual schooling, bringing widespread Internet service to her impoverished area, in the mountainous center of the country. She doesn’t post comments on TikTok; she hardly knows how to write.

Oct 20, 2024 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Jordan Salama

Friday nights were reserved for Shabbat dinner with Mama Fortunée. That was the deal in my family when I was growing up, for as long as I could remember. No sleepovers, no plans with friends — not on Friday nights, when we would make the drive from our house in Westchester County to hers in Glen Cove, a small city across Long Island Sound. Mama Fortunée was what we called my grandmother, whose Arabic name, Mas’ouda, meant the same good fortune as it did in French.

Nov 19, 2023 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Julie Gray |Jordan Salama

Skip to main content Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, found­ed in 1943, is the longest-run­n­ing orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to the sup­port and cel­e­bra­tion of Jew­ish literature. Get the latest reviews, news, and more in your inbox. Author pho­to by Michael Salama Jor­dan Sala­ma orig­i­nal­ly shared his Jew­ish Book Month read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions with JBC’s email list this past week. Below is the letter.