February Book Club: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

Note: Order One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This now!

This event will be hosted at BOYFRIEND co-op, a queer Palestinian-owned cafe and bar. Tickets include a specialty Taiwanese pineapple cake from Rose's Pineapple Shorts. One drink per person minimum purchase at BOYFRIEND co-op (both their cafe and bar will be open!)

About Yellow Peril Books' Book Club

We're so excited to welcome you to our ongoing community book club hosted around Brooklyn! Each month, we host an in person book club at a local AAPI owned business in Brooklyn. We started this book club with a few goals in mind

• Spotlight some of our favorite AAPI owned businesses, and ensure ticket revenues are invested in supporting these amazing gems. For most events, all ticket proceeds go towards the hosting business. If you'd like to donate to YPB to support our programming efforts, please donate here. 

• Feature different Asian and Asian American authors and their works

• Bring our community together in person to facilitate deeper conversation and connection

Book Club Rules

• You commit to treating everyone with respect and care

• Stay home if you feel sick!

• You do NOT need to have read or finished the book, but you do have to be ready for spoilers! We'll be discussing the themes of the book and you can still participate :)

If you would like to attend but the ticket cost is prohibitive, please reach out to contact@yellowperilbooks.com and we will try to find a solution! We never want lack of funds to be a barrier to entry.

About One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • PALESTINE BOOK AWARD WINNER • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM • From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.

"[A] bracing memoir and manifesto." —The New York Times

"I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn’t anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it." —Tommy Orange, bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There There

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

About the Author

OMAR EL AKKAD is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world.

Refunds and Exchanges

Ticket purchases cannot be refunded. Because we don't have our own storefront, we host our events in partnership with other local small businesses, meaning we share all operational costs as well as revenue with them based on anticipated attendance. The only way for our partner businesses to properly prepare supplies, space, and food/drinks for these events is to have a clear idea of how many attendees to expect, meaning that any last-minute changes make it that much harder to host.

Exchanges for future events are allowed if you reach out a minimum of 10 days before the start of the original event you signed up for. Our events are usually sold out and we want to make sure that we'd have enough time to fill any open spots with people who are hoping to join. Please reach out to contact@yellowperilbooks.com if you have any issues with your ticket.