Ep. 87 Finding a Seat at the Table with Ayser Salman

Today we welcome Ayser Salman to The Stacks. Ayser is the author of The Wrong End of the Table a comedic memoir about her experiences as a Muslim Arab American woman just trying to fit in. We talk about finding your political voice, the privilege of passing, and if we’ve ever felt truly seen in a book.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

Books

• The Wrong End of the Table by Ayser Salman
• James Frey
• Valeria Luiselli
• Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo
• The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi
• Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentio
• Malcolm Gladwell
• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
• Talking to Stranger by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Luiselli
• The Color of Love by Marra B. Gad
• Pure Drivel by Steve Martin
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• Matilda by Roald Dahl
• Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
• Let’s Pretend this Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
• The Silver Lining Playbook by Matthew Quick
• The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
• Game Thrones by George R. R. Martin
• Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth

Everything Else

• The Weinstein Company
• Pose (FX)
• Miramax
• Ted Bundy
• Cesar Millan
• Revisionist History (Pushkin Industries)
• “Telling the Story of the Stanford Rape Case” (Marina Koren, The Atlantic)
• “The Sandra Bland Video: What We Know” (Adeel Hassan, The New York Times)
• “Everyone Believed Larry Nassar” (Kerry Howley, The Cut)
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Richard Linklater, 2019)
• Cate Blanchett
• Woody Allen
• Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
• #Bookstagram
• Hugh Laurie
• Funny Girl (William Wyler and Herbert Ross, 1968)
• My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)
• Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, 2012)
• Bradley Cooper
• David O. Russell
• The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006)
• Anne Hathaway
• Meryl Streep
• Game of Thrones — Season 2 (HBO)
• BlackKklansman (Spike Lee, 2018)

Connect with Ayser: Instagram | Twitter | Website
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The Stacks received The Wrong End of the Table from the publisher. For more information click here.

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