“O My Language, Help me to Learn / So That I May Embrace the Universe”: Transnational Feminist Communities in the Work of Palestinian Women Writers

Abstract

In the title quote, Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) expresses his desire for a space that preserves Palestinian identity within a wider culture. Rather than leaving ties to Palestine behind, Darwish, like writers included in this article – Susan Abulhawa, Hala Alyan, Randa Jarrar, and Naomi Shihab Nye, to name a few – puts his homeland within a framework of diasporic space. Similarly, Rana Barakat views exile as both an individual “shipwreck” and a communal journey, a stance that reflects intersectional feminist values. Negotiating “the isolation of the individual within our shared collective condition,” Barakat offers what Anna Ball terms a “transnational feminist approach”. She joins a larger body of post 1948 writers who construct what the “poet of witness” Caroline Forché calls “assembled communities”, groups of friends who, she says, are “varied in the universe” but come together via various kinds of communication in order to discuss common issues. This article seeks to explore a variety of transformative dialogues which transcend difference by standing together for justice, equality, and peace. How might feminist writers and activists negotiate a balance between connecting to their homeland but also recognize the potential that arises from the transnationalism of Avtar Brah’s concept of “diasporic space?” As a place marked by hybridity, where tradition is continually transformed, this theoretical concept addresses the confluence of migrating populations, capital, commodities and culture. This article also builds on Steven Salaita’s Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine (2016), a work that explores how such dialogues across borders offer a viable means of resistance. As Cynthia Franklin, editor of Biography’s special issue “Life in Occupied Palestine” (2014), notes, while sumoud (steadfastness) is a Palestinian tradition, it gains strength when Palestinians ally with social groups who are interconnected via various means of oppression.