She is remembered on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail,[5] and the Arab American Book Award nonfiction prize was renamed in her honor.

In part, Shakir used the book to chronicle the gradual shift among children of immigrants, principally from Lebanon and Palestine, as they moved from trying to erase their heritage through assimilation to adding the word Arab when describing themselves as American.

Protagonists range in age from a teenager who resists her father’s understanding of honor, to an elderly woman who returns from the grave for one last try at whipping her family into shape.

Most of the stories dramatize personal issues involving negotiation between generations and cultures.

But others have a political dimension—one is set against the backdrop of the Lebanese civil war; another is a response to 9/11, narrated by a woman who keeps watch all day on the Arab family next door.