“Owning one's story is as important as the ownership of physical space”: An Interview with Susan Abulhawa

Ahmad Qabaha

doi:10.13169/bethunivj.36.2019.0133

Abstract

In this interview, American-Palestinian writer, political commentator and human rights activist Susan Abulhawa, author of Mornings in Jenin (2006), My Voice Sought the Wind (2013) and The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), discusses why it is important for Palestinians to reciprocate solidarity with other social justice struggles and the ways in which she engages with the notions of strangeness and exile in her fiction. Abulhawa also comments on the human, cultural and communal aspects of her work, as well as the relationship between literature, especially the novel, history and politics.

Highlights

In this interview, American-Palestinian writer, political commentator and human rights activist Susan Abulhawa, author of Mornings in Jenin (2006), My Voice Sought the Wind (2013) and The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), discusses why it is important for Palestinians to reciprocate solidarity with other social justice struggles and the ways in which she engages with the notions of strangeness and exile in her fiction
Ahmad Qabaha: You have recently utilised a humanist framework in an article you wrote on the importance for Palestinians to consider “reciprocal solidarity with nations and peoples who are standing with us, in heart and in action”(Abulhawa,“Confronting”)
It’s easy to imagine the impact of Fanon on the essays you mentioned in the previous question regarding reciprocal solidarity with other social justice struggles and regarding the essential blackness of the Palestinian struggle

Summary

Introduction

American-Palestinian writer, political commentator and human rights activist Susan Abulhawa, author of Mornings in Jenin (2006), My Voice Sought the Wind (2013) and The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), discusses why it is important for Palestinians to reciprocate solidarity with other social justice struggles and the ways in which she engages with the notions of strangeness and exile in her fiction. Susan’s writings revolve around universal human concerns with which Palestinians people living under the Israeli occupation struggle. Her visit to Jenin refugee camp in the immediate aftermath of the massacre that took place in April 2002 fired her imagination and drive her to write ‘a human story’ about people living under the yoke of Israeli settler-colonialism.

Results

Conclusion