|
Abu Jmeel's Daughter & Other Stories: Arab Folk Tales from Palestine and Lebanon By Jamal Salim Nuwayhid, S. K. Jayyusi (Editor), C. Tingley (Translator) Publisher: Interlink Pub Group (February 2002), 346 pages These 27 traditional folk stories were written down, shortly before her death, by Jamal Sleem Nuweihed, who had recounted them to the children of her extended family over many years. Authentically Arab in their themes, yet timelessly universal, they are sometimes magical, sometimes naturalistic, and combine a wealth of vivid detail with elements of pathos and humor. The Adam of Two Edens By Mahmoud Darwish Publisher: Syracuse University Press (February 1, 2001), 203 pages In these 14 long and serial poems, translated by various hands and put into their final English versions here by Daniel Abdalhayy Moore, variegated repetitions evince the panorama and detail of refugee experience: "a desert for eternal absurdity/ a desert for the tablets of the law/ ...for school books, prophets and scientists." The voice throughout accumulates a rich mix of world-weariness and endurance: "Ruba'iyat" repeats the refrain "I've seen all I want to see of..." with different referents ("of the sea," "of blood," "of lightning"), while in "Eleven Planets," the speaker finds his own identity foreign: "fearing... my fountain's water,/ milk on the lips of figs, fearing my own language." -- From Publisher's Weekly A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture By Rafi Segal (Editor), Eyal Weizman (Editor), David Tartakover Publisher: Verso Books (November 27, 2003), 187 pages Initially censored by the Association of Israeli Architects, A Civilian Occupation is the first attempt by Israeli architects, scholars, journalists, and photographers to highlight the role of Israeli architecture in the Middle East conflict. Contributors: Daniel Bauer, B'Tselem, Meron Benvenisti, Zvi Efrat, Nadav Harel, Miki Kratsman, Milutin Labudovic, Gideon Levy, Ilan Potash, Sharon Rotbard, Rafi Segal, Efrat Shvily, Eran Tamir-Tawil, Eyal Weizman, Pavel Wolberg, Oren Yiftachel. Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature By Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Editor) Publisher: Columbia University Press (August 15, 1994), 755 pages This unique and definitive anthology offers the widest selection ever compiled of modern Palestinian literature. Presented here are translations of poems, stories, and excerpts from novels, as well as works by Palestinian poets who write in English. Also included are personal narratives by Palestinian writers depicting the varied aspects of Palestinian life from the turn of the century to the present. These images capture life in Arab Palestine before 1948 and during the wars of 1948 and 1967, and vivify the ensuing calamities experienced by Palestinians in the diaspora and under occupation. Born Palestinian, Born Black By Suheir Hammad Publisher: Writers & Readers Publishing (October 1, 1996), 97 pages Culture and Imperialism By Edward W. Said Publisher: Vintage (Reprint Edition May 31, 1994), 416 pages Culture and Imperialism demonstrates that Western imperialism's most effective tools for dominating other cultures have been literary in nature as much as political and economic. He traces the themes of 19th- and 20th-century Western fiction and contemporary mass media as weapons of conquest and also brilliantly analyzes the rise of oppositional indigenous voices in the literatures of the "colonies." (Exerpt from an Amazon.com editorial review) Culture and Resistance: Conversations With Edward W. Said By David Barsamian, Edward W. Said Publisher: South End Press (June 2003), 248 pages In his latest book of interviews, Edward W. Said discusses the centrality of popular resistance to his understanding of culture, history, and social change. He reveals his latest thoughts on the war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and lays out a compelling vision for a secular, democratic future in the Middle East�and globally. Drops of This Story By Suheir Hammad Publisher: Writers & Readers Publishing (October 1, 1996), 93 pages As a young Palestinian woman raised in Brooklyn, during the rise of crack and Hip Hop, Suheir developed her own ideas of what words such as "race" and "culture" meant to her. Drops of This Story is her young soul in words. Readers will feel the growing paints of the young woman of color as she tries to write herself into existence. --From Ingram The Edward Said Reader By Edward W. Said, Moustafa Bayoumi (Editor), Andrew Rubin (Editor) Publisher: Vintage (September 12, 2000), 472 pages The Edward Said Reader includes key sections from all of Said's books, from the groundbreaking 1966 study of Joseph Conrad to his new memoir, Out of Place. Whether he is writing of Zionism or Palestinian self-determination, Jane Austen or Yeats, music or the media, Said's uncompromising intelligence casts urgent light on every subject he undertakes. The Edward Said Reader will prove a joy to the general reader and an indispensable resource for scholars of politics, history, literature, and cultural studies: in short, of all those fields that his work has influenced and, in some cases, transformed. Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists By Joanna Kadi Publisher: South End Press (October 1, 1994), 291 pages Adding to the literature on multiculturalism, this collection of essays, poems, and recipes highlights some of the experiences and attitudes of North American women of Arab descent. The contributors share strong nationalist sentiments about their root countries (primarily Lebanon and Palestine), rail against the bigotry and ignorance encountered by their families in North America, and uniformly denounce the Gulf War. -- From Library Journal Giving Voice to Stones: Place and Identity in Palestinian Literature By Barbara McKean Parmenter Publisher: University of Texas Press (1994), 127 pages In this book, Barbara McKean Parmenter explores the roots of Western and Zionist images of Palestine, then draws upon the work of Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, and other writers to trace how Palestinians have represented their experience of home and exile since the First World War. This unique blending of cultural geography and literary analysis opens an unusual window on the struggle between these two peoples over a land that both divides them and brings them together. In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story By Ghada Karmi Publisher: Verso (December 2002), 288 pages Very few diaspora Palestinians have written memoirs as intimate as Ghada Karmi's frank account of her life: her childhood in Palestine, the flight to Britain after the catastrophe of 1948, and coming of age in the coffee-bars of Golders Green, the middle-class Jewish quarter in North London. A gentle humour describes the bizarre and sometimes tense realities that mask her life in 'Little Tel Aviv' and, later, her struggle, like that of many other women in the late fifties, to get a university grant to study medicine. I Saw Ramallah By Mourid Barghouti (Author), Edward W. Said (Introduction) Publisher: Anchor (May 13, 2003), 208 pages Barred from his homeland after 1967�s Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile�shuttling among the world�s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into Ramallah and is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 By Mahmoud Darwish Publisher: University of California Press (March 1, 1995), 182 pages "A disturbing and beautifully written account of the 1982 Israeli invasion specifically of August 6th, when land, sea, and air bombardment was at its most intense. It is not a memoir in the ordinary sense, written with the leisurely distance of time, but the embodiment of an agony in which time itself is the subject of meditation." -- From the Voice Literary Supplement Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories By Ghassan Kanafani Publisher: Three Continents Pr. (November 1998) The Next Jerusalem: Sharing the Divided City By Michael Sorkin (Editor) Publisher: Monacelli Press (May 16, 2002), 421 pages In this new collection, Israelim Palestinian, and American architects and urbanists consider the physical future of Jerusalem and offer specific propposals for making the city functional, beautiful, and physically generous to its inhabitants' needs. The essays focus on issues of ecology, preservation, neighborhood development, and open space, rather than on politics per se. While the authors take a variety of approaches, all agree on the necessity of sharing the city amicably. Contributors include Lebbeus Woods, M. Christine Boyer, Samira Haj, Achva Stein, Moshe Safdie, Thom Mayne, Mack Scogin, and Jafar Tukan. On the Hills of God By Ibrahim Fawal Publisher: River City Pub. (October 1998), 444 pages June 1947 was the eve of the end of the world for 18-year old Yousif Safi, for Yousif is a Palestinian. In this captivating novel, a boy becomes a man, while all he has ever known crumbles around him. When we first encounter Yousif, he is filled with hopes for his education abroad and with daydreams of his first love, the beautiful Salwa. As the future of Palestine grows increasingly bleak, and as his countrymen and his fellow villagers face the establishment of Israel, Yousif resolves to face his own responsibilities of manhood. Despite monumental odds, Yousif vows to win back both his loves--Salwa and Palestine--and to create his world anew. Orientalism By Edward W. Said Publisher: Vintage (October 12, 1979), 432 pages Said's groundbreaking work meticulously examines the way in which the West observes the Arabs. Foreign Affairs magazine commented: "Few books on the Middle East have aroused more controversy than this dazzling attack on traditional scholarship. Said is relentless in exposing the hidden, and not-so-hidden, agendas and assumptions of many Western scholars who have written about the Middle East. He brings to the task of deconstructing the arguments of self-described "Orientalists" the tools of the literary critic -- and he takes no prisoners. " Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories By Ghassan Kanafani Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers (August 2000), 199 pages Ghassan Kanafani's meteoric literary and political career ended abruptly one morning in July 1972, when his booby-trapped car exploded, killing him and his niece. At the time, Kanafani was the spokesperson for the most militant wing of the Palestinian fedayeen. That militancy is reflected in these 14 stories. Beginning with a narrative disconcertingly entitled "The Child Borrows His Uncle's Gun and Goes East to Safad," Kanafani plunges into the 1948 conflict between the Jews and Palestinians, following a 17-year-old, Mansur, whose actions mirror the author's own experiences. (From a Publishers Weekly review) Power, Politics, and Culture By Edward W. Said Publisher: Vintage (August 27, 2002), 512 pages In these twenty-eight interviews, Said addresses everything from Palestine to Pavarotti, from his nomadic upbringing under colonial rule to his politically active and often controversial adulthood, and reflects on Austen, Beckett, Conrad, Naipaul, Mahfouz, and Rushdie, as well as on fellow critics Bloom, Derrida, and Foucault. The passion Said feels for literature, music, history, and politics is powerfully conveyed in this indispensable complement to his prolific life's work. The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist By Imil Habibi Publisher: Interlink Books (September 1, 2001), 192 pages This contemporary classic, the story of a Palestinian who becomes a citizen of Israel, combines fact and fantasy, tragedy and comedy. Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel. An informer for the Zionist state, his stupidity, candor, and cowardice make him more of a victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, he is gradually transformed from a disaster-haunted, gullible collaborator into a Palestinian-no hero still, but a simple man intent on survival and, perhaps, happiness. Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems By Mahmoud Darwish Publisher: University of California Press (January 6, 2003), 208 pages Mahmoud Darwish is a literary rarity: at once critically acclaimed as one of the most important poets in the Arabic language, and beloved as the voice of his people. He is a living legend whose lyrics are sung by fieldworkers and schoolchildren. He has assimilated some of the world's oldest literary traditions at the same time that he has struggled to open new possibilities for poetry. This collection spans Darwish's entire career, nearly four decades, revealing an impressive range of expression and form. A splendid team of translators has collaborated with the poet on these new translations, which capture Darwish's distinctive voice and spirit. ©2000-2007 electronicIntifada.net unless otherwise noted. Content may represent personal view of author. This page was printed from the Electronic Intifada website at electronicIntifada.net. You may freely e-mail, print out, copy, and redistribute this page for informational purposes on a non-commercial basis. To republish content credited to the Electronic Intifada in online or print publications, please get in touch via electronicIntifada.net/contact |