Under the Nakba Tree

Fragments of a Palestinian Family in Canada

By Mowafa Said Househ
Categories: Literature & Language Studies, Auto/biography & Memoir, History, Linguistics, Language & Translation Studies, Social Sciences, Racism & Discrimination, Regional & Cultural Studies, Diaspora Studies, Immigration, Emigration & Transnationalism
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Paperback : 9781771992039, 140 pages, February 2022
Ebook (PDF) : 9781771992046, 213 pages, March 2022
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781771992053, 213 pages, March 2022
Ebook (Kindle) : 9781771992060, 180 pages, June 2019

Table of contents

  1. 1. Fleeing and Frozen
  2. 2. Calls to Prayer
  3. 3. A Circle of Tears
  4. East
    1. 4. The Price of Slippers
    2. 5. Planting Saplings
    3. 6. In the Line of Fire
  5. West
    1. 7. Uprisings
    2. 8. Fighting Back
    3. 9. Wise Mentors, Rough Waters
    4. 10. A Thirst for Knowledge
  6. North
    1. 11. Flying to Amman
    2. 12. Welcome to Al-Quds
    3. 13. The Children of Palestine
    4. 14. Chaos at Masjid al-Aqsa
    5. 15. Violence in the Streets
    6. 16. Family Ties
    7. 17. Surrounded by Family in the Middle of a War
  7. South
    1. 18. Crossing Borders
    2. 19. At First Sight
    3. 20. Putting Down New Roots
  8. Epilogue: Half-Belonging in the World
  9. Acknowledgements

A moving memoir that depicts the lives of those who live on occupied land and the struggles that define them.

Description

Mowafa Said Househ’s family fled Palestine in 1948 and arrived in Canada in the 1970s. He spent his childhood in Edmonton, Alberta, where he grew up as a visible minority and a Muslim whose family had a deeply fractured history. In the year 2000, when Mowafa visited his family’s homeland of Palestine at the beginning of the Second Intifada, he witnessed the effects of prolonged conflict and occupation. It was those observations and that experience that inspired him not only to tell his story but to realize many of the intergenerational and colonial traumas that he shares with the Indigenous people of Turtle Island. His moving memoir depicts the lives of those who live on occupied land and the struggles that define them.