This article explores border crossing and the Palestinian city as a literary metropolis—two major themes in the works of emerging Palestinian novelists in Israel. It looks at the “re-Palestinization” of urban space by writers who belong to a post-Oslo generation of Palestinian intellectuals that left villages and small towns in Israel to go and study, work, and live in the city. What distinguishes the literature of this generation is its negotiation of border crossing in a fragmented geography and its engagement with the city as a space of paradoxical encounter between a national imaginary and a settler-colonial reality. Based on a critical reading of their works, the article argues that Adania Shibli and Ibtisam Azem challenge colonial border discourse, exposing the ongoing Zionist erasure of the Palestinian city and creating a new topography for Palestinian literature. The article also traces the role of these writers in the “twinning” of Haifa and Ramallah starting in the late 1990s, and it examines how this literary and cultural “sisterhood” informs spatial resistance.
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Spring 2019
Research Article|
May 01 2019
From Haifa to Ramallah (and Back): New/Old Palestinian Literary Topography Available to Purchase
Amal Eqeiq
Amal Eqeiq
Amal Eqeiq is an assistant professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College. She is also a translator and creative writer. Her essays and translations have appeared in Jadaliyya, Mada Masr, and several anthologies, including Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) and Min Fami: Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Space and Resistance (Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education, 2014).
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Journal of Palestine Studies (2019) 48 (3): 26–42.
Citation
Amal Eqeiq; From Haifa to Ramallah (and Back): New/Old Palestinian Literary Topography. Journal of Palestine Studies 1 May 2019; 48 (3): 26–42. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2019.48.3.26
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