A reading list on the Palestinian experience in the face of oppression

Books about Palestinians and the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

By Hala Alyan & Talal Alyan | Electric Literature | June 11, 2021

…what follows is a list of works that we believe capture, each in their own way, some small piece of our enduring collective memory.

What can memory endure? A story, we know, can be told and retold for generations, find its way centuries later in the mouth of a descendant. What then of a memory expunged—so thoroughly and violently that it splinters and disperses across the world? The question often posed to Palestinians is who has the right to a memory? If the efforts to ethnically cleanse neighborhoods in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and so many others are successful, will the families still be allowed to remember them as their homes? Will their children? Will their children’s children?

Collective memory, for Palestinians, continues to be an anchor. The precise and beautiful understanding shared by so many of us that, even after so many decades, with enough patience, the memory returns faithfully and belongs to us all. There is no substitute for addressing the continued subjugation of Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid laws and open-air imprisonment, but what follows is a list of works that we believe capture, each in their own way, some small piece of our enduring collective memory.

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