Naomi Shihab Nye

Wisdom and laughter in a child's view of Palestine



Randa Abdel-Fattah’s new novel for young people, Where the Streets Had a Name, is an engaging family story deftly that weaves together every iconic element of Palestinian disenfranchisement — land titles, checkpoints, curfews, the general frustrations of daily life — along with jokes, arguments and repeated stories which keep people going. Lost olive trees and the profound and irrevocable sense of time and haunted belonging, are in place by page 20. And they all ring very very true. Naomi Shihab Nye reviews for The Electronic Intifada.