This is a fascinating and illuminating academic study. The author – Fatma Kassem undertook extensive interviews of Palestinian women to document their experiences, from the time before the Nakba (the forced displacement of Palestinians that occurred around the time of the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948) to the present day. With this previously under-used oral source as a basis, she describes what is known in clichéd terms as “the plight of the Palestinian people”, viewed through a female lens, and gives us a Palestinian History 101. The book never turns into Jew-bashing exercise, as she scrupulously attributes wrongdoings to the individual or the group (Jewish militia) responsible for them, and also depicts acts of kindness and fairness from Jewish neighbours or colleagues. She does, however, point out the structural racism in place in Israel and the way the system was/is played by those who would like to get rid of Palestinians, as well as the arbitrariness of the distinction between Arab Israelis and Palestinians.
On the downside, this book reads very much like the translated sociology dissertation it is. The main text (translated from the Hebrew) isn’t easy-flowing, and the extensive quotes (translated too literally from the Arabic) are nigh on incomprehensible. I’d still Palestinian Women to whoever is interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ( )

In Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory, Fatma Kassem traces the displacement and fractured memory of Palestinian women. As mentioned already, Kassem's tome documents these trajectories within an academic setting, thus earning quasi-dismissive interventions of readers rather unfairly.

Kassem's prose is eloquent in denoting the harried fumblings of these rather underrepresented women. To me, the unfurling of the oral history is set rather fluidly against the backdrop of methodological constraints, the myriad of theoretical conjectures that frame her thesis. Perhaps the strong undercurrent that highlights the dissatisfaction of a lot of reviewers is the juxtaposition of narrative non-fiction and terse academic writing. ( )

Fatma Kassem has produced a book from her PhD about Palestinian women and their stories. She quotes from them about their experiences of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, in 1948, and discusses the opposition they face in actually telling their stories. Kassem includes her own difficult experience of submitting her research proposal, and being intimidated by the then Dean into changing and deleting sentences and statements e.g. he could not accept the use of the word Nakba for what he viewed as Independence Day.

A problem I find with the book generally is that the author appears to be trying to fit her narrative histories into a set of theories about the body, language, and the sense of home. One example that particularly strikes me as odd is her description of a grieving woman: 'Her black dress and white head scarf, the pain on her face and her hands stretched out skyward seeking help, drew my attention to the sophistication and depth of her body performance' (187). Referring to her grieving as a performance drew me up sharp, despite the fact that I know this is an academic work, and the author is attempting to show aspects of narration of pain and history. I wondered if the book had been translated from Arabic, but there is no translator listed, or any suggestion that the author did not write this in English.

I think the book is useful, and I understand the author's framing of her interviewees' dialogue with her explanations and expansions of their stories; I don't feel that there is too little dialogue from Palestinian women. What I do feel is that the book is an awkward hybrid between the academic and the general, resulting in an unfinished-feeling text that isn't going to satisfy either the academic or the general reader.

Thank you to Zed Books for the review copy. ( )

I really wanted to read this, and I really wanted to enjoy it. The idea of giving voice to a previously-unheard group of women whose experience was surely profound was intriguing. Unfortunately, my impression of the first few pages was that this book doesn't do an awful lot to tell their stories. It is very academic, and consequently my impression is of a particularly dry and tedious book. Banished from my shelf, sadly, because I just couldn't break through the boredom. ( )

This book is a series of accounts by Palestinian women who lived through the ‘Nakba’ of 1948, in which they lost their homes and were either forced to leave the newly-formed state of Israel or were internally displaced within it.

Except that it’s not. Not really. We don’t really hear much from the women themselves – only short quotes in certain places, to illustrate a particular point. We don’t get to know each woman clearly enough to feel the full power of her story from start to finish.

For a long time, we don’t get to the women at all. We hear about Foucault’s theory of the historical past as a rhetorical construct for the present. We have a chapter on the methodological aspects of telling life stories, another chapter on the author’s own life story, and detailed scrutiny of her effect on the women’s stories, their reactions to the tape recorder, etc etc. We’re 80 pages in before we get to what we came here for, the stories of Palestinian women.

The book was initially a PhD thesis, and it shows. It shows in the style of writing, which is academic and often quite dry, in the extensive quoting of Foucault, Spivak, Said, Minh-Ha et al, in the constant analysis of process and acknowledgement of flaws and biases, and a lot of other tactics which are perfectly necessary in order to forestall the potential questions and objections of PhD supervisors, but which tend to distract and/or annoy the general reader.

It shows also, however, in positive ways. PhD theses, after all, require rigour in the methodology and depth in the analysis, and this book displays both of those merits. I loved the analysis of language and the body, for example:

"In my reading, when they describe Israeli ‘entry’ into the cities or villages in 1948 the choice of language used by the women I interviewed is linked to the penetration of the female body."

Kassem then explores the multiple ways in which this is relevant, from the obvious piercing of Palestinian defences to the fact that brides on their wedding night are, like Palestinians in 1948, inadequately prepared for the sexual act, and that a woman experiences a ‘conspiracy of silence’ from her family, similar to that within the Arab ‘family’ who knew what was going to happen but did nothing.

I also liked the stories of people who tried to return to their homes, as any people return to their homes after a war, but were called “infiltrators” and forcibly expelled. What struck me most was how the women themselves used this term “infiltrator” to describe themselves or their family members who tried to return to their homes. It reminded me how easily we can adopt language that doesn’t reflect our own view of reality.

The account of women’s clothing was also interesting, and much more nuanced than the total condemnation of the hijab commonly seen in Western media. Kassem recognises that conservative religious dress can be seen as an assertion of male power over women’s bodies, but also points out many examples of young women choosing to wear this style of their own accord, in the face of disapproval from older family members. In the context of Palestinians living in Israel, wearing full Muslim dress is often seen as a rebellious, political act. One woman, for example, lost her teaching job over it.

"Covering the body from head to toe could be interpreted as women complying with the religious imperative to discipline their body and reproduce their subordination. However, the choice by a young, educated woman to dress in such a fashion that ‘this woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer (Fanon, 1965: 44) … can also be interpreted as an act of resistance; a refusal to comply…"

My overall conclusion: lots of good stuff here, but could have done with a rewrite to make it more appealing to a general audience rather than an academic one. ( )