Baba Was a Rolling Stone by Sama'an Ashrawi

In a debut of wild scope, Sama'an Ashrawi's Baba Was a Rolling Stone tells the stories of his father's place within the nascent Palestinian rock'n'roll scene of the 60s, as well as the author's 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-Bara'em, (The Blooms in English), the revolutionary family band his father fronted in his native Palestine, now missing somewhere in America, Ashrawi's 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 Whitman's American multitudes - and so, of course, that contains the whole world's.