Re-Imaging Palestine in Selected Poems from Handal’s The Lives of Rain
Abstract
This paper investigates Nathalie Handal’s re-imaging of Palestine as the Promised Land. Such a re-imaging is crystallized through two perspectives: identity politics, which spotlights two distinctively separated groups, viz., the Palestinians and the Israelis, and shared/global identity which depends on transcendence to common humanity. Handal is a French-American poet, born in Haiti to a Palestinian family from Bethlehem. She has lived in different places in Europe, the US and Arab World. She reconstructs an image of Palestine from family memories and from her strong sense of belonging enhanced by frequent journeys to Palestine in the hope that she might have a home in poetry. In many poems such as “Ephratha” , “Bethlehem”, “ Regrets in Galilee”, “Jenin”, “Gaza City”, “Haifa”, “Baladna” and “Amrika” , Handal recalls a geomental image of home. However, a geopolitical image of home is put in juxtaposition in order to highlight Handal’s journey for obtaining global identity. I argue that the two perspectives, which are intricately intertwined in Handal’s poems due to her life and travels, provide a version of complete portrait of Palestine.
Keywords: Palestine; Memories; Identity politics; Handal
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Abdel Nasser, Tahia. (2108). Palestine and Latin America: Lina Meruane’s Volverse Palestina and Nathalie Handal’s La Estrella Invisible. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Vol. 54 (2), 239-253, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2017.1325771.
Agbaria, Ayman K. & Muhanad Mustafa. (2012). Two states for three peoples: the ‘Palestinian-Israeli’ in the Future Vision Documents of the Palestinians in Israel. Ethnic and Racial Studies. Vol. 35(4), 718-736, DOI:
1080/01419870.2011.598234
Baumgart-Ochse, Claudia. (2014). Opposed or Intertwined? Religious and Secular Conceptions of National Identity in Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Politics, Religion & Ideology. Vol. 15 (3), 401–420,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2014.948531
Bernstein, Mary.(2005). Identity Politics. Annual Review Sociology. Vol. 31, 47-74. http://dx.doi.org.library.iau.edu.sa/10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100054
Chappell, Larry W. (2012). Review of Narrative and the Politics of Identity: The Cultural Psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Youth. Journal of Political Science Education. Vol.8 (2), 226-227, DOI:
1080/15512169.2012.667663
Deudney, Daniel H. (2013). Geopolitics. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 17, 2019 from https://www.britannica.com/topic/geopolitics
Elden, Stuart. (2013). The Geopolitics of King Lear: Territory, Land, Earth. Law & Literature, Vol. 25 (2), 147-165. https://doi.org/10.1525/lal.2013.25.2.147
El Hajj, Hind and Sirene Harb. (2016). Travel, Relationality and Privilege in Palestinian American Poetry. Mashriq & Mahjar. Vol. 3 (2), 62-87.
“Ephrathah”.aboutbiblioprophecy.com. Retrieved 24 April,2020 from http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/s72.htm .
Folch-Serra, Mireya. (2009). The Geopolitics of Identity: Popular Literature, Censorship, and the Spanish Media. Identity: An International Journal of theory and Research. Vol. 2(2), 177-193, DOI: 10.1207/S1532706XID0202_05
García, José Pascual Mora. (2004). La Dama, el Cura y el Maestro en el Siglo XIX ( The Lady, the Cure and the Master in the 19th Century). Mérida: Universidad de Los Andes Consejo de Publicaciones.
Gerlach, Joe. (2015). Editing worlds: participatory mapping and a minor geopolitics. Transactions. Vol. 40 (2),273-286, Doi: 10.1111/tran.12075.
Gordon, Nahida. (2016). Palestine Is Our Home: Voices of Loss, Courage, and Steadfastness. Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp Print Us.
Handal, Nathalie. (2005). The Lives of Rain. Northampton: Interlink Books.
---. (2006). Interview with Nathalie Handal by Lisa Suhair Majaj. International Feminist Journal of Politics. Vol. 8 (4), 612-617, DOI: 10.1080/14616740600980336.
--- . (2016). Building an Architecture for the Wanderer: A Conversation with Nathalie Handal by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren. World Literature Today.12-17. Retrieved 6 July, 2020 from
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2016/may/buildingarchitecture-wanderer-conversation-nathalie-handal-rachel-morgenstern-clarren
---. (2017).Diasporic Cartographies: An Interview With Nathalie Handal by Lily Pearl Balloffet & Elizabeth Claire Saylor. Mashriq & Mahjar. Vol. 4 (1),141-146.
Heyes, Cressida. (2016). Identity Politics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 7 Nov., 2019 from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/#Bib
History.com Editors. (2019). Palestine. Retrieved 27 Nov. 2019 from https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/palestine#section_11
Ingram, Alan. (2016). Rethinking art and geopolitics through aesthetics: artist responses to the Iraq war. Transactions. Vol. 41, 1–13 Doi: 10.1111/tran.12099.
Klandermans, P. G. (2014). Identity Politics and Politicized Identities: Identity Processes and the Dynamics of Protest. Political Psychology. Vol. 35 (1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12167
Krämer, Gudrun. (2011). A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Luz, Nimrod. (2008).The politics of sacred places: Palestinian identity, collective memory, and resistance in the Hassan Bek mosque conflict. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Vol. 26,1036-1052,
doi:10.1068/d2508.
Maguire, Laura. (2016). Identity Politics. Philosophy Talk. Retrieved 7 Nov., 2019 from https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/identity-politics
Mavroudi, Elizabeth. (2008). Palestinians in Diaspora, Empowerment and Informal Political Space. Political Geography. Vol. 27 (1), 57-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2007.06.009
Nabulsi, Karma. (2003). Politics of Identity-III. Government and Opposition. Vol. 38 (4), 479-496.
O’Neill, Fionnuala. (2013). Toward Tyranny: Geopolitics and Genre, A Response to Stuart Elden. Law & Literature. Vol. 25(2), 166-174. https://doi.org/10.1525/lal.2013.25.2.166
Pau,l Joshua. “(2019).Not Black and White, but Black and Red’: Anti-identity identity politics and #AllLivesMatter. Ethnicities. Vol. 19(1), 3–19. DOI:10.1177/146879681879166
The History of Palestine. (2009). mingoi313 Youtube. Retrieved 16 November, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3bxj1uvDXU
Yoon, HK. (1991). On Geomentality. GeoJournal.Vol.25 (4), 387-392. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02439490
Wang Zheng. (2018). Historical Memory as an Omitted Variable? In Zheng Wang. Memory Politics, Identity and Conflict (pp. 1-9). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62621-5_1
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2021-2701-05
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
eISSN : 2550-2247
ISSN : 0128-5157