10/20/2026
This fall, grab your favorite lunch at noon and tune in to virtual conversations with the Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System on topics from repairing the effects of racial injustice to fighting for equitable access to recovering from exile and loss. Let’s learn together!
Lunch and Learn returns with special guest Samantha Ellis in conversation with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George's County Memorial Library System discussing her book, "Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture."
About the Book:
Samantha’s mother tongue is dying out. The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction.
The realization that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s "living in the days of the aubergines" or "chopping onions on my heart" or reminding him to "always carry salt" opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on this heritage without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle?
In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl, and the unexpected joys of fusion food. Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noah’s Ark to the calm of the British Museum, from the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages to the banks of the River Tigris. As Samantha considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves.
Always Carry Salt is an immersive and moving meditation on the words and traditions that shape us and what we carry forward into future generations.
The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Samantha Ellis is the author of "How to be a Heroine" and Take Courage. Her plays include "How to Date a Feminist," "Cling to Me Like Ivy," and "Operation Magic Carpet." Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the TLS, the Spectator, Literary Review and more. She worked on the first two Paddington films. She lives in London.
