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Published date: 4 March 2021 09:17 UTC | Last update: 4 weeks ago In my home, reading is part of our culture. I gather with my children most evenings to spend time quietly reading together, as an answer to the virtual schooling, video gaming, football watching daytime activities. I’ve always been proud that my children love books, but four years ago, I encountered a small crisis: my daughter was frustrated. She told me she wished she had books that featured an Arab girl as the main character. I promptly handed her Naomi Shihab Nye’s 1999 novel, Habibi, which is about a Palestinian American girl, living in St Louis, who experiences a culture shock when her father decides to move the family back to Palestine. ....
In early 2011, as she watched the removal of the graffiti that had been scrawled around Tahrir Square in the heady days of the popular uprising, followed by a “cleansing” of that space of revolt, Dina Heshmat realized she was witnessing the deliberate rewriting of history, a deletion of the people’s spontaneous discourse, to be replaced by a more elitist narrative. Guided by this awareness, Heshmat sets out, in Egypt 1919: The Revolution in Literature and Film, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) to re-examine the Egyptian revolution of the previous century, looking into the country’s archives to find unpublished novels and out-of-print articles that reflect the people’s mood during what she argues was the early 20th century’s equivalent of Egypt’s Arab Spring: a popular uprising against an oppressive regime by society’s poorest and most downtrodden classes, that was later claimed by the nationalist bourgeoisie. ....
1. Sustainably sourced Christmas decorations from Palestinian artisans Christmas Ornaments $5 These 100% cotton tree ornaments were sewn in the village of Surif between Bethlehem and Hebron by the Surif Women’s Cooperative. The group was founded in 1983 but traces its roots to 1950 when Mennonite volunteers founded an embroidery program in the village to provide opportunities for refugee women. From Sunbula: “Surif’s Women’s Cooperative is known for their distinct style, using cream-colored ‘mansouri’ cotton fabric instead of the popular ‘eitamin’ cross-stitch canvas. The embroidery patterns are produced by a system of counting threads, a method that gives the embroidery its striking and exact appearance on both sides of the fabric.” ....