Fadwa Tuqan was known to Arab pupils of my generation (at least) through their poetry textbooks. Her name is associated with Palestine and therefore with the Arab nationalist cause. Arab schoolchildren grow up with an almost mythological image of Tuqan as a resilient woman who fought against British and Israeli imperialism by the power of her poetic discourse. She stands as a public figure whose poetry is as highly valued as that of the "great" male poets of the Arab world. Tuqan's autobiography, however, comes as a shock to the Arab reader, who had associated her name with politics. For it discloses the unknown side of Tuqan, the woman who always found it difficult to be engaged in the political life of her country. Political poetry, which gained her fame, is not where Tuqan excels, as she emerges in her autobiography to tell us. While Tuqan is allowed a public voice as an acknowledged poet, the irony is that, instead of affirming this public voice, she has created a more personal one in her autobiography; a voice of alienation estrangement, displacement and longing for self-accomplishment. Tuqan's autobiography is accepted in Arabic tradition as a literary text. Most of the reviews written about it approach it as such, and the feminist aspect of the book is hardly raised. This paper is divided into three main sections. The first section, on modes of production, considers issues of the production and distribution of Tuqan's autobiography in its Arabic and English forms; sections two and three on modes of self-representation and section three on modes of oppression, are based more on my reading of Tuqan's original Arabic text.

Ibtisam Barakat was three years old during the 1967 War. The aftermath of the war constructs the core of her autobiography, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood. She narrates her personal experience as a three-year-old child facing a constant removal from many places inside and outside Palestine. There are three elements that Tasting the Sky unfolds as a narrative of a displaced person writing autobiography: the intimate relationship with family, the absence of home, and the presence of writing as an alternative for settlement. This autobiography fits a subcategory I call displaced autobiography. It documents and creates an unsettled life of an author who identifies with the rest of her displaced people as being physically homeless and emotionally home-bound. Barakat recalls how the first steps of escaping warplanes resulted in dramatic events such as having no time to put on both shoes and being separated from her family during the night. Displaced autobiography is not just a life described in print; it is rather a written journey that takes the reader from one place to another--in Barakat's case, nine times of forced departures in Palestine and Jordan occur before the book is over! Informed by theories of autobiography and postcolonialism, this paper gives a working definition for the term, "displaced autobiography" and its characteristics as demonstrated by Tasting the Sky. It also analyzes the major three elements that illustrate the working of displacement in the creation of such a moving text.

In Sharon and My Mother-in-Law (2003), Suad Amiry chronicles the daily trials and tribulations of living under occupation in the West bank city of Ramallah. In addition to dealing with nerve-wracking and humiliating experiences at airports and Israeli checkpoints, dodging bullets during heavy shelling, and trying to obtain impossible permits in order to travel back and forth to Ramallah, she must deal with the added pressure of hosting her 91 years old mother-in-law, whom she evacuates from her heavily militarized neighborhood. The added pressure of entertaining her mother-in-law, especially during long curfews--amidst a shortage of food, water and electricity--drive Suad to the brink of madness. Through writing her diaries and sending emails to friends abroad, she tries to remain sane in the face of Sharon's oppressive regime and her mother-in-law's harmless but stifling presence at her home. Like most creative writing born under circumstances of war, Sharon and my Mother-in-Law transcends the private world of its writer to encompass collective stories of pain, loss and displacement among Palestinians. Amiry is adamant about telling stories of friends and neighbors who have lost loved ones to death or exile, personal property, and even palm and olive trees, emblems of Palestinian national identity and livelihood. Additionally, she documents the small acts of resistance among fellow residents. Her 'heroic' episodes include her sarcastic treatment and belittlement of Israeli administrators and soldiers who interrogate her as well as a collaborative midnight drumming session, which her neighbors improvise and execute, using household pots and pans as musical instruments. In this paper, I emphasize Suad Amiry's use of humor as means of 'medicating' and alleviating her own sense of boredom, anxiety and paranoia in a time of conflict, as she documents stories of oppression and injustice and celebrates a resilient people who have not lost their sense of humor and humanity. Drawing on theories of humor including Michale Bakhtin's and contemporary feminists such as Gina Barreca, I analyze the power and limitations of Amiry's painfully humorous diaries that reflect the absurdity of life under occupation and the ways through which Ramellah residents manage to navigate their war-torn city and establish a meaningful existence amidst the chaos and violence surrounding them.

Fay Afaf Kanafani's memoir, Nadia the Captive of Hope, is a real life narrative that addresses the issue of displacement and alienation the writer/protagonist, Nadia (the writer chooses a pseudonym for her narrative), goes through amidst the political turmoil in Lebanon and Palestine. The memoir traces personal and political developments,starting with the establishment of the colonial mandate of Britain and France in the region and ending with the establishment of the State of Israel and the beginning of the Lebanese civil war. Displaced multiple times, from Lebanon to Palestine to Iraq to the U.S, then finally back to Lebanon, Nadia describes these displaced journeys, while recounting her struggle resisting social conventions and constraints, both patriarchal and familial, imposed upon her by both the females and males of her household. Nadia's actual and self determination journeys were fraught along the way with feelings of fear, alienation, and insecurity from home both in Lebanon and Palestine, so that only when she gains a scholarship to the U.S, she feels as if she is "free from the fear of insecurity that complicated [her] past." I analyze how the actual journeys Nadia goes through become a controlling trope of Kanafani's narrative, which serve as catalysts for her own self-perception and complicates her multi-layered identity. Informed by 3rd world feminism and Arab feminist discourse, I also investigate how Kanafani negotiates the political and social displacements she experiences that lead to the construction, reconstruction, and formation of her multi-layered identity.