The challenge's category two: book by a Palestinian author was the number one category in this year's voting, which doesn't come as a surprise. The US is supporting Israel's terrible military assault on the Palestinian people, and in current US media coverage of that war, Palestinian voices have been few and far between. At the same time, universities and literary organizations have been more than usually brazen in their silencing of supporters of Palestinian rights since last fall.
A number of organizations and bloggers more knowledgeable than I am have already published lists of things to read by Palestinians, including this recent one from Words Without Borders and this list of "40 Books to Understand Palestine" from Lithub, as well as this much shorter list from Five Books.
I finally decided I would go ahead and give my own recommendations, though I haven't read a lot of these. I figured that it would be worth doing since I'm including academic books as well as some older, but not 1960s classics that might get less publicity from most other book blogs. To find some of these I looked up the publications of Palestinian authors who signed a link denouncing Mahmoud Abbas for statements about the Holocaust in September of this year. I also got a huge list of recommendations from one of the challenge's long-time participants in our Facebook group. If you join that group, you can see his list there.
This week's musical theme song is the late Rim Banna's "A Time to Cry: A Lament Over Jerusalem"
I'm going to start with Edward Said, just because he's the author in this category that I'm the most familiar with. I have been reading his work for years, and was lucky enough to see him speak in the 1990s when I was a graduate student. He was eloquent and inspiring, introducing ideas that may have been old for many, but were new and revelatory for me at the time. The most influential of his works in academia is Orientalism, originally published in 1978. On the more immediate situation in Palestine, I would recommend The Politics of Dispossesion, though all of his books are relevant and worth reading.
A more recent academic book on the history of settler colonialism in Palestine is Sherene Seikaly's Men of Capital which is about Palestinian capitalists under the British mandate. Rashid Khalidi had this to say about it: "Men of Capital is a remarkable achievement. Sherene Seikaly introduces us to the class of Palestinian capitalists, a group too often overlooked in histories of Palestine and Israel, and brilliantly puts them into the context of their time, exploring their group consciousness, hopes, and aspirations. Examining their failures to break through the iron ceiling of Britain's colonial commitment to the Zionist project, Seikaly offers a powerful critique of the strait-jacket of settler colonialism."
Speaking of Rashid Khalidi, I see from the challenge spreadsheet that one of our members has already read his Hundred Years War on Palestine which is on the top of many reading lists for obvious reasons. it looks like a great comprehensive introduction to the history of settler colonialism in Palestine.
Another recent academic book by a Palestinian author is Ashjan Ajour's Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes. It won the Palestine Book Award in 2022 and has already been recommended by another challenge participant for this year. Other winners of this prize would also make great choices. You can see a complete list of these book awards here
Published in 2015, so relatively recent by academic standards, Lila Abu-Lughod's Do Muslim Women Need Saving? while not specifically about Palestine, addresses a discourse that is used to justify colonialism in the Middle-East in general. Less recent, but more obviously about Israel and Palestine is her 2008 book, Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory Abu-Lughod is a highly-respected feminist anthropologist, and is also the author of the now-classic Writing Women's Worlds about Bedouin women.
Paying homage to Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish's title, Palestine as Metaphor, is the highly-lauded 2016 essay collection Gaza as Metaphor edited by Helga Tawil-Souri and Dina Matar. Not all the authors in the collection are Palestinian, but editors Dina Matar and Tawil-Souri are, and many of the authors of individual essays are as well. Matar has also written a collection of the stories of everday people in Palestine under the title What it Means to be Palestinian
If you're looking for a novel, Adania Shibli's Minor Detail would also be timely. Shibli was recently disinvited from the Frankfurt Book fair, and the book fair canceled the celebration of the novel's winning of the 2023 LiBeraturpreis prize for an author from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Arab world.
Because I've met her and followed her work for a long time, I'm recommending Suheir Hammad's Born Palestinian, Born Black & the Gaza Suite. Hammad is a poet who was part of the spoken-word scene in the 1990s, and has also been a long-time activist in New York City. To hear and see Hammad read from her poems on Gaza, go to this video from the Palestinian Festival of Literature.
Probably no list like this would be complete without Mahmood Darwish, a legendary and prolific poet. Here is the profile of him from Words Without Borders. I have not read his work, but if I were going to choose something at this moment, I think I would agree with Lit Hub's recommendation to read his book of interviews, Palestine as Metaphor. Or maybe I would read his collection In the Presence of Absence.
Another major Palestinian writer whose works are considered classics is Ghassan Kanafani, whose work was popular in the 1960s. He was assassinated in Lebanon in 1972. His 1966 novella All That's Left to You is set in Gaza and just came out along with some of his stories in a new edition this fall. Some of Kanafani's writing would also work for the category "book written in the 1960s" if you are looking for a way to expand the number of Palestinian writers on your reading list for this year.
Ghada Karmi was born in Jerusalem and was exiled with her family in 1948. She now lives in London, where she practiced as a doctor with a specialization in medical treatment of refugees. She has written a number of books, including two very well-received memoirs, Return and In Search of Fatima, as well as a 2007 book about the Israel-Palestine conflict entitled Married to Another Man which is based on what seems likely to be an apocryphal story of two rabbis who visited Palestine in the 1890s and remarked that the "bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." Whether or not the title is based on a fable, Ilan Pappe, whose opinion I tend to trust, called this book a "must read."
For a new work of fiction originally written in English, Susan Muaddi Darraj's book Behind You Is the Sea looks interesting to me, though it seems to be more about Palestinian-Americans than about Palestine itself. It's been getting very positive reviews.
Another more recent book popular with literary bloggers and revieweres is Sharon and My Mother in Law: Ramallah Diaries by Suad Amiry. According to review it is about the absurdity of living under occupation, and is described as "hilarious." I thought that might be a good way for those feeling too much despair from the news reports of Israel's ongoing crimes against humanity.
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