Baba Was a Rolling Stone

"Baba Was a Rolling Stone is an achievement of a book, which traverses multiple landscapes—literal and emotional—with tenderness, thoughtfulness, vivid imagery and sharp storytelling. This book succeeds in answering the question of how we can see ourselves in our beloveds, across geography, across generations, across sound and song."—HANIF ABDURRAQIB

"Resistance comes in many forms. Baba Was a Rolling Stone encompasses Palestines first rock band; long-haul friendship with heavy-hitters in hip-hop and comedy; the Arab influence on Country and the Blues; and Palestinian life in Old Jerusalem or in Texas. Samaan Ashrawis relentless attempt to understand the past — and himself — refuses erasure, wrapping extraordinary family histories around music. This multi-layered book pulls on countless threads, and it tugs at the heart." —EMMA WARREN

In a debut of wild scope, SAMAAN ASHRAWIS Baba Was a Rolling Stone tells the stories of his fathers place within the nascent Palestinian rocknroll scene of the 60s, as well as the authors own odyssey through the living history of American music and culture. Told in the voice of the writer, who attempts to track down a member of Al-Baraem, (The Blooms in English), the revolutionary family band his father fronted in his native Palestine, now missing somewhere in America, Ashrawis tale takes the form of a series of road trips that act as the catalyst for discoveries and recoveries of diasporic family histories and the great traditions of American music. From the early blues through to New York hip-hop, hardcore punk, indie, classic funk and bleeding into stand-up, visual art, graffiti and fashion — Baba Was a Rolling Stone joins the infinite dots of American culture in a wholly new, wholly original way, and in apparently effortless, elegant prose, brings us a world of migrant America as influential as it is invisible. This is not just a book for our age, but truly a book for the ages — a book that contains all of Whitmans American multitudes—and so, of course, that contains the whole worlds.