Please read "Mornings in Jenin" bySusan Abulhawa.
Mornings in Jenin
Susan Adulhawa
ISBN: 978-1-60819-046-1
Bloomsbury
What is life like as a perpetual refugee? Most in the West can’t even conceive of living in a stateless society, where two peoples are constantly at war, both having been wronged by society and history. This is Palestine in the modern world. It’s about as foreign an environment as most readers could imagine.Before reading Mornings in Jenin, my only real insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had come from dry news reports of atrocities on both sides over the years. This book is a life changing force. It won’t necessarily change your political leanings, but it will take you far into the Palestinian mindset and make apparent just how impossible this conflict is for any side to “win.”
There is no common ground, and yet these two groups are exactly in the same spot, each seeking the security of being able to live in peace on a land they can call their own.
Although it is a fictional account, there are plenty of real news events included in the book, including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and the bombing of Beirut. The story told here is that of one Palestinian family, whose roots are in the olive groves of Palestine before the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. In particular, the novel is told from the point of view of the youngest daughter, Amal, who was born after the family had been exiled to the refugee camp of Jenin.
Susan Adulhawa
ISBN: 978-1-60819-046-1
Bloomsbury
What is life like as a perpetual refugee? Most in the West can’t even conceive of living in a stateless society, where two peoples are constantly at war, both having been wronged by society and history. This is Palestine in the modern world. It’s about as foreign an environment as most readers could imagine.Before reading Mornings in Jenin, my only real insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had come from dry news reports of atrocities on both sides over the years. This book is a life changing force. It won’t necessarily change your political leanings, but it will take you far into the Palestinian mindset and make apparent just how impossible this conflict is for any side to “win.”
There is no common ground, and yet these two groups are exactly in the same spot, each seeking the security of being able to live in peace on a land they can call their own.
Although it is a fictional account, there are plenty of real news events included in the book, including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and the bombing of Beirut. The story told here is that of one Palestinian family, whose roots are in the olive groves of Palestine before the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. In particular, the novel is told from the point of view of the youngest daughter, Amal, who was born after the family had been exiled to the refugee camp of Jenin.As one would expect, this novel is one of heartbreak and loss, of coping with unimaginable tragedy and hope for a restoration of what was taken. An interesting component in the story is the circumstance in which one brother of the family (presumed dead) is raised as an Israeli Jew. More than anything, this duality and tenuousness of life is what sets this book apart from merely being a diatribe about Palestinian loss. It is so easy to see how both sides feel and why they take the actions they do to defend what each considers to be “their” exclusive homeland.
As if all this weren’t reason enough to read Mornings in Jenin, author Susan Abulhawa has written one of the most lyrical and prosaic books I‘ve ever read. There are passages that will cause a reader to stop mid-story in awe, so beautifully written are they. It is this beauty that helps carry the heavy meaning of loss. Understanding what land means to a landless people is made more bittersweet by this compelling writing, of her beautiful descriptions of the land, the family‘s love for one another, and the stoic endurance that is adopted when one suffers a fatal loss.
This is the story of loss that no political solution can solve. Yet despite the tragedies heaped on one family, there is still reason for hope and humanity, to carry on, to love again. It’s a powerful book, beautifully written.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
Uprooted Palestinian
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