Anan Ameri played a pivotal role in the creation of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Wandering Palestinian chronicles her life from 1974 in Beirut, Lebanon to Detroit, Michigan as she learns how to adjust to culture shock, finds her independence, and becomes a driving force in Detroit’s large and politically active Arab American community—an involvement that helped her break away from her isolation, resume her activism, and paved the way for her to become a recognized and respected leader in her community.

Zeina G. Halabi examines the unmaking of the intellectual as prophetic figure, national icon, and exile in Arabic literature and film from the 1990s onwards. She comparatively explores how contemporary writers and film directors such as Rabee Jaber, Rawi Hage, Rashid al-Daif, Seba al-Herz and Elia Suleiman have displaced the archetype of the intellectual as it appears in writings by Elias Khoury, Edward Said, Jurji Zaidan and Mahmoud Darwish. In so doing, Halabi identifies and theorises alternative articulations of political commitment, displacement, and loss in the wake of unfulfilled prophecies of emancipation and national liberation. The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual offers critical tools to understand the evolving relations between aesthetics and politics in the alleged post-political era of Arabic literature and culture. --

This book examines the distinction between literary expatriation and exile through a 'contrapuntal reading' of modern Palestinian and American writing. It argues that exile, in the Palestinian case especially, is a political catastrophe; it is banishment by a colonial power. It suggests that, unlike expatriation (a choice of a foreign land over one’s own), exile is a political rather than an artistic concept and is forced rather than voluntary — while exile can be emancipatory, it is always an unwelcome loss. In addition to its historical dimension, exile also entails a different perception of return to expatriation. This book frames expatriates as quintessentially American, particularly intellectuals and artists seeking a space of creativity and social dissidence in the experience of living away from home. At the heart of both literary discourses, however, is a preoccupation with home, belonging, identity, language, mobility and homecoming.

This book analyzes the evolution and cultivation of modern Palestinian collective memory and its role in shaping Palestinian national identity from its inception in the 1920s to the 2006 Palestinian elections.

What does it means to be Palestinian in the diaspora?This collection of 100 personal reflections on being Palestinian is the first book of its kind. Reflecting on Palestinian identity as it is experienced at the individual level, issues of identity, exile, refugee status, nostalgia, belonging and alienation are at the heart of the book. The contributors speak in many voices, exploring the richness and diversity of identity construction among Palestinians in the diaspora.Included are contributions from Palestinians living in the Anglo-Saxon diaspora, mainly the UK and North America. They come from a variety of professional backgrounds: business people, lawyers, judges, fiction writers, poets, journalists (press, TV and radio), film-makers, diplomats and academics. Men and women, young and old, Christians and Muslims offer essays, as do Palestinians from different generations (first, second and third generations). This mix of professional, gender, faith and generational categories ensures that a variety of voices are heard.The editor sets the scene with an Introduction, and his Epilogue deals with issues of identity, exile and diaspora as concepts that give sense to the personal reflections.Key FeaturesThe first book to gather personal reflections on what it means to be PalestinianContributes to the debate on what it means to be PalestinianAsks what the diaspora is for PalestiniansLooks at how being Palestinian varies across gender, generation, religious affiliation and professional interest.FROM APF:Is being Palestinian a 'pain in the neck', or a 'sentence to suffer gladly'? Does Palestinian identity reside in cross-stitch embroidery, sweet knafeh and the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, or defending the rights of oppressed communities around the world? Does being Palestinian in diaspora mean anything at all? In this ground-breaking volume, the first of its kind, 102 contributors from North America and the United Kingdom reflect in their own words on what it means to be Palestinian in diaspora. Exploring how Palestine is both lost and found, bereaved and celebrated in diaspora, and the tangled ties between 'home' and 'homeland', Being Palestinian takes the reader on an intimate journey into the diaspora to reveal a human story: how does it feel when you cannot find Palestine under 'P' in the encyclopaedia your father brings home? Why grow fig and orange trees in the Arizona desert? What does it mean to know every inch of a village that no longer exists? Touching, troubling but full of character and wit, the reflections in Being Palestinian offer a radically fresh look at the modern Palestinian experience in the West.

"The best sustained analysis of the Intifada."--Charles Smith, author of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict