{"id":18645,"date":"2025-11-09T12:27:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T04:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=18645"},"modified":"2025-11-09T12:28:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T04:28:26","slug":"3011-mornings-in-jenin-and-palestinian-narrative-in-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=18645","title":{"rendered":"[3011] Mornings in Jenin and Palestinian narrative in literature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a short author\u2019s note near the end of Susan Abulhawa\u2019s novel Mornings in Jenin<\/em>. In the last paragraph, the author recounted the time she met Edward Said and how that influenced her. Abulhawa is a Palestinian American, just like Said. In that page, she mentioned that Said lamented how \u201cthe Palestinian narrative was lacking in literature.\u201d After that conversation, she \u201cincorporated his disappointment into [her] resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on that, I think in some instances literature and art in general can be more effective in promoting a cause than academic or non-fiction pieces of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past two years or so in response to the killings in Gaza as well as the constant illegal Israeli settlers\u2019 violence in the West Bank, I have attempted to educate myself further about the Palestinian experience. Wikipedia has been a constant companion because it is the easiest access to a generally good source of information. But reading Wikipedia might be dissatisfying and it is easy to drown in a sea of dry hyperlinks and articles that are too long for the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rashid Khalidi\u2019s The Hundred Years\u2019 War on Palestine<\/a><\/em> has been helpful in guiding me through the narrative and make sense of all the information on Wikipedia. The book is the best non-fiction work on Palestine I have read yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But non-fiction makes you work for it. This might not work for many who read for entertainment purposes instead of learning. And non-fiction can be dry. I think the reason The Hundred Years\u2019 War on Palestine<\/em> reads great is because Khalidi merges his personal stories to make sense of the facts, which makes the grand historical narrative spanning for more than a lifetime more human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is where Mornings in Jenin<\/em> excels. First published in 2006 under the more controversial original title The Scar of David<\/em>, the novel for me is the most emotional book I have read in a long time. The characters are fictional but they live through real events described in The Hundred Years\u2019 War on Palestine<\/em>. There were multiple segments of the novel where I was on the verge of tearing up. Reading it was an emotional rollercoaster that makes one sympathizes with the Palestinian people even more. It adds an extra dimension that is hard for most non-fiction to tap into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, Mornings in Jenin<\/em> is the first English literature that explores the Palestinian experience and so, fulfilling Abulhawa\u2019s promise to herself to incorporate Palestine into modern literature. That makes Mornings in Jenin an important novel to read in order to understand the Palestinian sufferings better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, I feel Edward Said is right about the importance of literature to the Palestinian experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a short author\u2019s note near the end of Susan Abulhawa\u2019s novel Mornings in Jenin. In the last paragraph, the author recounted the time she met Edward Said and how that influenced her. Abulhawa is a Palestinian American, just like Said. In that page, she mentioned that Said lamented how \u201cthe Palestinian narrative was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,25,20],"tags":[1672,94,2120,93,2121,2024],"class_list":["post-18645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-printed-materials","category-conflict-disaster","category-history-heritage","tag-edward-said","tag-israel","tag-mornings-in-jenin","tag-palestine","tag-susan-abulhawa","tag-the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18645"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18654,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18645\/revisions\/18654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}