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| In Your Eyes a Sandstorm: Ways of Being Palestinian
ISBN: 9780520949850
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Palestinian Arabs -- West Bank; Palestinian Arabs -- Gaza Strip;
Part human-interest journalism, part ethnography, part national portrait, Neslen (Occupied Minds) examines a people struggling with history, occupation, and diaspora. Neslen travels across Israel, the occupied territories, and several Gulf states, sometimes at great personal risk, to interview Palestinians from various walks of life-NGO leaders, supermodels, refugee camp residents, and jihadis. The book's subjects share common experiences, among them the psychological effects of occupation, limitations on personal and economic mobility, bearing witness to extreme violence, and coping with religious and political factionalism. Neslen accesses some unique voices, including a zookeeper/taxidermist in the West Bank and a PFLP hijacker who became a poster girl for Palestinian resistance in the 1970s. One of the most salient themes to emerge from the collection is the experience of Palestinian women and their political marginalization by right-wing religious groups. Neslen's occasionally awkward prose ("Below, chartreuse grass sprouted from sour hills like a halfhearted hair transplant") and terse analysis prevent the book from being more than the sum of its parts, but as it is, it still offers important insight into the multifaceted Palestinian experience. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Neslen Arthur :
Arthur Neslen has written about the Middle East for the Guardian, Observer, Haaretz , the Jane's information group and, as a correspondent, for the websites of the Economist and al-Jazeera. He is also the author of Occupied Minds: A Journey through the Israeli Psyche . |
