A powerful look into occupied Gaza through the lenses of three ordinary young men.
A scholar of childhood trauma focuses on the stories of three Palestinians in this nonfiction case study.
Hammam, Khalil, and Hussam, writes Barber, “are ordinary people living in an extraordinary context.” All three are Palestinian men who came of age during the intifada and Israeli occupation of their home in the Gaza Strip. While the book’s insightful introductory chapter offers readers ample historical context, the author, a professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee, emphasizes that this is not “a book about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” Instead, it is a story of resilience, survival, and trauma, told from the perspectives of its three main subjects. Barber’s research on childhood trauma in war-torn environments took him on multiple trips to the Gaza Strip over the last three decades, where he developed a close relationship with the three young men. Stories shared by the trio range from the typical trials of adolescence—Hammam, for instance, spends entire chapters stressing over his school exams—to confrontations with the Israeli military. In one particularly harrowing anecdote involving both physical and sexual abuse, Hussam tells of witnessing a Palestinian assuring soldiers that he would “confess to anything” if released. Many of the stories defy Western narratives about Palestinian youth: In addition to getting highlights of Khalil’s day-to-day family life, readers learn of his history of political activism as he eschewed joining “the front lines of the stone throwers” to participate in behind-the-scenes organizations of demonstrations. As the author of multiple scholarly books on childhood psychology, Barber approaches the stories of Hammam, Khalil, and Hussam with an empathetic style that gives them space to tell their own stories. The book’s final section looks at the events of October 7, 2023 from a Palestinian perspective, providing an intimate exploration of the ways in which the subsequent Israeli response impacted the lives of three average Palestinian families. The book’s engaging narrative is supplemented by research footnotes, though it never reads like an academic text. The book includes photographs, maps, and other visual elements that complement its accessibility.
A powerful look into occupied Gaza through the lenses of three ordinary young men.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9789695892831
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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