“Owning one's story is as important as the ownership of physical space”: An Interview with Susan Abulhawa

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/bethunivj.36.2019.0133
• Pages: 133-139
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Ahmad Qabaha

133 Bethlehem University Journal 36 (2019)

“Owning one’s story is as important as the

ownership of physical space”:An Interview with

Susan Abulhawa

Ahmad Qabaha

Abstract

In this interview, American-Palestinian writer, political commentator and

human rights activist Susan Abulhawa, author of Mornings in Jenin (2006), My

Voice Sought the Wind (2013) and The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015),

discusses why it is important for Palestinians to reciprocate solidarity with other

social justice struggles and the ways in which she engages with the notions of

strangeness and exile in her fiction. Abulhawa also comments on the human,

cultural and communal aspects of her work, as well as the relationship between

literature, especially the novel, history and politics.

Keywords: reciprocal solidarity; Palestinian struggle; Zionist settler-colonialism;

history; the human condition; indigenous narrative; Frantz Fanon.

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