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Palestinian Autobiogrpahic Writing St. John's University St. John's Scholar Theses and Dissertations 2021 JOURNEYS THROUGH HOME AND EXILE: PALESTINIAN AUTOBIOGRPAHIC WRITING Laila Shikaki Saint John's University, Jamaica New York Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/theses_dissertations Recommended Citation Shikaki, Laila, "JOURNEYS THROUGH HOME AND EXILE: PALESTINIAN AUTOBIOGRPAHIC WRITING" (2021). Theses and Dissertations. 251. https://scholar.stjohns.edu/theses_dissertations/251 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by St. John's Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of St. John's Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. JOURNEYS THROUGH HOME AND EXILE: PALESTINIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHIC WRITING A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY to the faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH of ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES at ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY New York by Laila Shikaki Date Submitted ____________ Date Approved______________ ______________________ _________________________ Laila Shikaki Dohra Ahmad © Copyright by Laila Shikaki 2021 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT JOURNEYS THROUGH HOME AND EXILE: PALESTINIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHIC WRITING Laila Shikaki This dissertation analyzes Palestinian autobiographical writing that discusses homeland, exile, and homesickness, with a focus on an intergenerational understandings of Palestine, both as an idea and as a physical place. It concentrates on the personal writing of Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine, written in Arabic and in English, and uses feminism and postcolonialism, especially the works of scholars from the Middle East, as its theoretical base. This necessity for writing and showcasing the personal, presented in the autobiographies themselves and my own analysis of them, comes from the need to defy the occupation, and the reshaping and renaming of Palestine. It thus becomes a revolutionary act when Palestinians assert their lives and use the personal pronoun “I” against the backdrop of their continuous erasure, confiscation of their lands, dismantling of their houses, stealing of their culture, and silencing of their voices. My central texts are autobiographical works by Jean Said Makdisi and Suad Amiry, Edward and Najla Said, Mourid and Tamim Barghouti, as well as the poetry of Nathalie Handal and Naomi Shihab Nye. Additionally, I will incorporate my own autobiographical published poems as a Palestinian who studied in the United States. DEDICATION To my Palestine: All the Words are Written for You ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication……………………………………………………………………………..ii Introduction …………………………………………………………………..……….1 Chapter One: Personal and Collective: Palestinian Women’s Autobiography……….33 Chapter Two: The Saids: Different Self-Representations Away From Palestine…….75 Chapter Three: Lost Homelands: An Exilic journey from Abstract to Real…………125 Chapter Four: I Write Poetry, too: Poetry and Palestinian Women…………………168 Works Cited Introduction…………………………………………………………....208 Works Cited Chapter One.………………………………………………….……….210 Works Cited Chapter Two …………………………………………………………..213 Works Cited Chapter Three………………………………………………………….215 Works Cited Chapter Four…………………………………………………………..217 iii Introduction In Mourid Barghouti’s second autobiography I Was Born Here, I Was Born There, he writes about his dismay of being labeled in a magazine as “Mourid Barghouti— Palestinian Authority” instead of “Palestine,” after the publication of one of his poems in an international magazine. Barghouti takes this opportunity to show his dismay not only from the Israeli occupation that led to the loss of Palestine, but to everyone who collaborates and allows the situation to perpetuate. He writes: “When I asked them to explain, they said there was no country called Palestine, to which my response was, ‘Is the Palestinian Authority a country?’” (Barghouti 141). This incident reminded me, as I was reading his book for the third time, of an introductory course I took with the American Fulbright Scholarship before pursuing my MFA in California in 2011, where my name tag had “Laila Shikaki—West Bank.” I scratched the two words and wrote “Palestine” instead. That alone allowed me to speak about my country to everyone who asked, and a lot did! Barghouti’s and my insistence on being labeled and identified correctly is at the core of this dissertation. It is what has led me to write about Palestinian autobiography where the personal “I” and the insistence on writing and representing the self is at the center. This assertion is also at the heart of Palestinian autobiographic writing, as we write in spite of continuous erasure and displacement, and thus the act of writing and studying Palestinian autobiography becomes crucial. This dissertation analyzes Palestinian autobiography written in the late 20th and early 21st century both in English and Arabic, by writers living inside and outside of Palestine, as well as my own published poems. I focus on homesickness, familial 1 relationships, and the interpretation of self and Palestine. In this dissertation I show that Palestinian autobiography can be read in multiple ways. The depiction of Palestine, and even the existence of more than one Palestine, is present in every one of the autobiographies I write about. I argue in most chapters that just as the personal “I” changes and shifts as a person is writing their autobiography, so does the image of Palestine change with every writer, depending on their physical and emotional location. When it comes to Palestinian autobiography, the act of writing a self materializes in distinct ways. Palestinian identities and the selves Palestinians use while writing cannot be looked at as mere inventions that can be manipulated in order to receive more attention, since our country is claimed to be an invention as well, a land that had no people. The act of writing about a self that is continuously erased, about a people whose land is stolen and confiscated, their streets forbidden to them, and the names of their cities changed, becomes more serious, realistic, and urgent, burdening its authors with responsibility. Those autobiographic writers, however, are able to be creative, humorous, sarcastic, and romantic at the same time. Several characteristics shown in Palestinian autobiography make it unique. I aim to show that while most Palestinian authors write about their lives and the lives of their families, they also employ collective writing that can help in the understanding of the Palestinian cause. Most Palestinian writers use political historical events as the starting point of their narrative, introduce generational aspirations and contexts, and rely on family to tell their stories. I argue throughout this dissertation that writing the self in the midst of literal erasure and displacement is political on its own. The political in Palestinian modern autobiographic writing, however, does not need to be mentioned by name, although in most 2 cases, as my examples show, it is. It is revolutionary to just narrate a personal story because a Palestinian personal narrative always has politics embedded in it, one way or another. The insistence on writing about displacement, but also joy; writing about exile, but also family relations and love is collective, political, and Palestinian. It is thus impossible to find a non-political Palestinian autobiography written after the Nakba of 1948. I argue in my chapters that “political” does not necessarily mean writing about news, policy, and statistical dates and figures. When it comes to an occupied people, simply writing down their life story, living semi normal lives, and depicting patriarchy and the status quo is political. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands aims to destroy all notions of sovereignty, but also identity. And since Palestine is still under settler colonial occupation, Palestinian authors focus, whether explicitly or implicitly, on politics and the effects of the occupation. In her book Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggle (2017), Tahia Abdel Nasser reveals the specificity of Palestinian personal writing. She argues: While postcolonial autobiography dealt with the effects of colonialism in the Arab world and offered forms of self-representation to challenge colonial and Orientalist misrepresentations, Palestinian memoirs focused on the writer’s relationship to Palestine. These memoirs dealt with the legacy of the Nakba (catastrophe), the Israeli occupation, and the segregation enforced on the Palestinian population since 1948. Writers revisited their youth in British Mandate Palestine or the effects of the loss of Palestine in 1948 and the 1967 War in Memoirs. (Abdel Nasser 7) This relationship to Palestine is the foundation of my dissertation, and I show how the devastating years Abdel Nasser mentions above affect the authors I study and how they see themselves and Palestine. And while many Palestinians write away from Palestine, they write about and to it. This dissertation mostly presents writings of authors outside of Palestine, always connecting the situation of Palestine to the writer’s life away from it. 3 Barghouti writes about his visit to Palestine, Amiry writes about her illegal status in her homeland, and Edward Said writes about the effects of certain years on his life and the lives of many thousands of Palestinians. While every Palestinian story is different, most Palestinian
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