Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad

They had everything taken from them b... Congratulations to Chimwemwe Undi

Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad

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Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad is a beautiful and fascinating analysis of narrative turning points and recognition where Hammad connects novels and literature, Edward Said’s writings and observations, Aristotle’s Poetics, and the climate crisis with the Palestinian cause and humanity.

Originally a speech Hammad delivered for the Edward Said Memorial Lecture in September of 2023, the audiobook also includes an afterword from Hammad about the current genocide in Gaza and what narrative recognition means in this context.

This book reaffirms for me why writing and narrative is vital to not only the survival of the world but also our humanity.

David Naimond interviews Isabella Hammad for his Tin House podcast, Between the Covers.

Isabella Hammad: The other day, I was in a conversation with a writer there called Mahmoud [Rashed], who’s been unable to leave, you may know about him, you’re nodding. He said lots of things, but he said, “It’s not enough to feel with us. You have to talk about us,” which I think when we prioritize that, when we return to this as the priority here, it’s okay to have all this unease and to talk about the difficulties of speaking, the compromises of inherent in speech, the lies we tell ourselves about the power of language and how that’s bound up within industry and particularly in this country, in the US, and balance that with actually the importance of continuing to speak. Those things exist at the same time and we can engage with that and talk more about that. But the most important thing is to keep talking about them. I find that helpful. It also humbles you a bit. It’s like, yes, you’re out of your head a bit about what’s the value of saying anything? But we do have to continue to speak because this is significant, not only for those people who are there who’ve been slaughtered, who are being slaughtered, and not only physically but in their minds, I don’t know how they’re surviving mentally under that, being moved from place to place, being starved, being imprisoned, being assaulted, being so frightened they can’t sleep. But the significance is huge for everybody on the planet. The fact that a population can be so disposable is terrifying. To me, it’s very linked with the ways in which we’re destroying the planet as well. It’s this kind of savage removal of any boundaries or any pretenses or the pretenses have been worn away. That’s really frightening and should frighten people very seriously for themselves.

Read Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide by Fargo Tbakhi:

What does Palestine require of us, as writers writing in English from within the imperial core, in this moment of genocide? I want to offer here some notes and some directions towards beginning to answer this question.

I use “Craft” here to describe the network of sanitizing influences exerted on writing in the English language: the influences of neoliberalism, of complicit institutions, and of the linguistic priorities of the state and of empire. Anticolonial writers in the U.S. and across the globe have long modeled alternative crafts which reject these priorities, and continue to do so in this present moment. Yet Craft still haunts our writing; these notes aim to clarify it, so we can rid ourselves of its influence.