An American Feminist in Palestine

Download or read book An American Feminist in Palestine written by Sherna Berger Gluck and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 1987, with the outbreak of the intifada, American TV beamed dramatic pictures of Palestinian children and older women taking to the streets of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem to confront Israeli soldiers. News stories also reported how a small band of Israeli women dressed in black were taking to the streets in West Jerusalem to challenge their government's policy. Moved by these images and emboldened by the example of the Israelis, Sherna Gluck broke a silence she, like so many Jewish Americans, had kept for so long. Her trip to Occupied Palestine one year later began a journey that introduced her not only to the horrors of Israeli occupation, but to the creativity of the Palestinian resistance movement and its transformative potential, especially for women. Highly sympathetic to the Palestinians, but with vigilantly critical observation, An American Feminist in Palestine recounts the author's experiences over the course of three years as she returned repeatedly to a number of villages and refugee camps. Weaving together anecdotes, interviews, and candid observations, she captures the vitality of the early days of the intifada and the problems that later began to plague the movement after the Gulf War. Author note: Sherna Berger Gluck directs the Oral History Program and teaches in the Women's Studies Program at California State University, Long Beach. Her previously published books include Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (with Daphne Patai).