Identity of writing and the writing of identity: Ayman Sikseck's novel Tishrin

Abstract

ABSTRACT While most Palestinian authors living in Israel write Arabic, a small group of writers, belonging to three separate generations, has chosen to write in Hebrew. Palestinian Hebrew writing is a phenomenon which is limited in scope but rich with significance. The Palestinian Hebrew text performatively creates a space for the emergence of a distinct literary, cultural and political identity. The article examines this space, in which the writers in question operate, and in which they produce works that cannot be said to belong squarely to either Hebrew or Arab Palestinian literature. Thus, such works insist on the “betweenness” of identity: a Hebrew “tongue” used to express the experience of a displaced Palestinian subject. I argue that in order to address such writing, a multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach is required. I therefore focus on the Hebrew novel Tishrin (2016), written by the Ayman Siskseck (b. 1984 in the city of Jaffa) with particular attention to the question of language choice as it relates to the themes underpinning Sikseck's novel. Such themes are then contextualized according to certain trends in contemporary Palestinian literature.