By Prof. Dina Matar, Centre for Global Media and Communications, SOAS University of London

Co-founder of ActforPal

At an ActforPal webinar, acclaimed Palestinian novelist, scientist and activist Susan Abulhawa addressed the topic of Writing Palestine: Voices of Resistance in a conversation with co-founders Professor Tahrir Hamdi and Naema Aldaqsha, along with Dr. Dalia Mostafa. The full video is available here.

Abulhawa is a prolific writer. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, has been translated into 32 languages and sold more than a million copies. Its sales and reach have made Abulhawa the most widely read contemporary Palestinian-American intellectual, novelist and activist. She continues to insist that Palestinian lives and memories matter in her poetic and unflinching written work and activist networks. Her next project is an anthology of Gazan writing, as she believes they should write their own history.

The discussion began with a question on what we can do in a time of ruination caused by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and increasing silencing of Palestinian voices worldwide. Abulhawa talked of her personal commitment and experiences and her insistence on providing material support for people in Gaza. As she said, “There is the physical and material support that people should engage in, such as supporting children’s schools in Gaza.”

At the same time, she noted the need for “layers and layers of reactions and responses to the moment and one way is to empower Palestinian writers to tell what is happening.” She continued, “There are a lot of people who like to speak for Palestinians. We see it now at the UN with countries like France and others who seek to speak for Palestinians as part of stripping agency, and we need to reclaim this agency and be the narrators of our own history and the architects of our pain.”

Abulhawa stressed the need not to lose hope “as this is an act of betrayal,” affirming, “I absolutely have hope.” She explained, “If you think about the [Palestinian] resistance and the fighters themselves, holding underground, hungry, losing their family, they have chosen to fight because they know there is something bigger than themselves. What they are fighting is an incomprehensible evil, so I feel it is a betrayal to give in to despair and go into a corner. All of us have a role to play. How we react is deeply personal, of what it means to be human in a world in which part of it hates you and the other part is supporting you and risking everything.”

In a wide-ranging conversation about her novels, her characters and her inspiration, Abulhawa insisted that she could not comment on the embedded meanings she puts in her novels, not being one to delve into literary theory: “I will admit that I am a biologist by training. I never studied literature and I liken my writing to the musicians who play an instrument without reading it. That is what I do … I cannot tell anybody how to read my book and leave the decision and the experience to the reader.”

As such, Abulhawa prefers to listen to what readers say, confirming her approach to agency from below. As she put it, “This is a question about how to strike balance between representing the Palestinians through your novels and the Palestinians having their own voice … I don’t write about someone else. I write about my family, my history and the common heritage. But when it comes to people who are erased, there is another layer of violence and colonialism and there is no right for others to intepret their rights because you cannot feel their pain. When I say I want Palestinians in Gaza to narrate this moment, this doesn’t mean that others cannot write about them. But what I am saying is that Palestinian voices in Gaza should be at the forefront.”

In response to a question by Hamdi about whether her novels speak to Ghassan Kanafani—who coined the term ‘resistance literature’—and whether she sees herself as a combatant writer, Abulhawa replied, “Whether I am a combatant writer I leave to others. I am not so interested in labeling myself. I am a storyteller, a Palestinian and am a proud member of the resistance. How people choose to define me is beyond my interest, to be honest. In terms of the impact, to me, literature and art and the totality of the cultural landscape is human sustenance, just like food and water. Literature and art is the stuff of our identity and our presence in the world. Any society is nothing without their stories, their culture. It becomes immensely more important when it comes from people who are constantly erased. Culture becomes a reclamation of one’s identity, history, ancestors … All of this a landscape of textures, sounds and beauty and tied to a land on this planet, and that is Palestine.”

When Hamdi mentioned Kanafani’s argument that culture is as important as armed resistance, Abulhawa responded to say that she diverged with Kanafani on that: “Our [Palestinian] cultural production is not just about resistance … Yes, we are preoccupied in this process of resistance now and it’s natural. But that is not the totality of who we are. Our cultural production becomes an act of resistance whether we intend it to be or not. But our cultural production extends far before and long after Israel. I therefore hesitate to define it as resistance.” It is because of this that for Abulhawa, memory becomes a superpower that Israel seeks to erase.

More generally, she talked about the ways in which she did not want to use old gendered or sexualised tropes in her novels, in order to avoid falling into the Orientalist trap. In her best-selling novel Mornings in Jenin, she drew on the importance of memory and the threads that we take from our ancestors as “an unbroken tapestry of traditions that we inherited.”

In response to a question about living together with Israelis, assuming the ongoing genocide ends, Abulhawa was adamant, reflecting what many ordinary Palestinians are feeling and saying: “There is overwhelming support by Israelis for the genocide. I no longer feel we can live with them. How does one live with people who have been systematically celebrating the most horrific violent holocaust upon us? No, we cannot live with them. This is ultimately a question for Palestinians collectively, how to live with people who supported the genocide with sadism. The holocaust against Jews was hidden, but here, they know and celebrate it. This is unprecedented. In the US, during the Jim Crow era, there was extraordinary violence against Blacks, but when people saw this, it shifted the whole country. This is the natural human impulse, but this seems to be absent in Israeli society. And this has been a surprise. The majority of the population celebrating the genocide is shocking the conscious.”

In ending the conversation, Abulhawa reiterated she did not want to talk about herself, her growing up in an orphanage in Jerusalem or her foster care experience in the US, but said that her political maturity came from reading the works of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said: “I am a reader of history and love to read historic accounts because it allowed me to see the patterns and how everything we are taught is a lie … Israel and Zionism have tried to control the narrative. There are all these attempts to put out new headlines and stories, and they have to work hard to maintain their artificial stories. Now, in the age of new gatekeepers, they no longer have a monopoly. In social media, people have access to information.”