Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
The Words of My Father - Love and Pain in Palestine - cover

We are sorry! The publisher (or author) gave us the instruction to take down this book from our catalog. But please don't worry, you still have more than 500,000 other books you can enjoy!

The Words of My Father - Love and Pain in Palestine

Yousef Bashir

Publisher: Harper

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

A Palestinian-American activist recalls his adolescence in Gaza during the Second Intifada, and how he made a strong commitment to peace in the face of devastating brutality in this moving, candid, and transformative memoir that reminds us of the importance of looking beyond prejudice, anger, and fear. 
"Captivating."--Robin Wright, The New Yorker 
Yousef Bashir’s story begins in Gaza, on a verdant ten-acre farm beside an Israeli settlement and military base. When the soccer-mad Yousef was eleven, the Second Intifada exploded. First came the shooting, then the occupation. Ordered to leave their family home, Yousef’s father refused, even when the Israeli soldiers moved in, seizing the top two floors. For five long years, three generations of the Bashir family were virtual prisoners in their own home. Despite this, Yousef’s father—a respected Palestinian schoolteacher whose belief in coexisting peacefully with his Israeli neighbors was unshakeable—treated the soldiers as honored guests. His commitment to peace was absolute.  
Though Yousef’s family attracted international media attention, and received letters of support from around the world, Yousef witnessed the destruction of his home, his neighborhood, and the happy life he had known with growing frustration and confusion. For the first time he wondered if his father’s belief in peace was justified and whether he was strong enough—or even wanted—to follow his example. At fifteen, that doubt was tested. Standing in his front yard with his father and three United Nations observers, he was shot in the spine by an Israeli soldier, leaving him in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, for a year.  
While an Israeli soldier shot him, it was Israeli doctors who saved Yousef and helped him eventually learn to walk again. In the wake of that experience, Yousef was forced to reckon with the words of his father. And like the generous, empathetic man who raised him, he too became an outspoken activist for peace. 
Amid the tragedy of the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict, The Words of My Father is a powerful tale of moral awakening and a fraught, ferocious, and profound relationship between a son and his father. Bashir's story and the ideals of peace and empathy it upholds are a soothing balm for these dangerous and troubled times, and a reminder that love and compassion are a gift—and a choice.
Available since: 05/06/2020.

Other books that might interest you

  • Sharp - The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion - cover

    Sharp - The Women Who Made an...

    Michelle Dean

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    A “deeply researched and uncommonly engrossing” book profiling ten trailblazing literary women, including Dorothy Parker and Joan Didion (Paris Review). 
     
    In Sharp, Michelle Dean explores the lives of ten women of vastly different backgrounds and points of view who all made a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of America. These women—Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm—are united by what Dean calls “sharpness,” the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit. 
     
    Sharp is a vibrant depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties gave out to literary slugging-matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books. It is also a passionate portrayal of how these women asserted themselves through their writing despite the extreme condescension of the male-dominated cultural establishment. 
     
    Mixing biography, literary criticism, and cultural history, Sharp is a celebration of this group of extraordinary women, an engaging introduction to their works, and a testament to how anyone who feels powerless can claim the mantle of writer, and, perhaps, change the world.
    Show book
  • Rosalind - one woman did the work three men took the glory - cover

    Rosalind - one woman did the...

    Jessica Mills

    • 0
    • 3
    • 0
    ‘Excellent’ The Times‘One of the best novels I have read this year’ Iris Costello‘A luminous, pin-sharp portrait of a true trailblazer’ Zoe Howe 
    Societies are oiled with the unpaid, unaccounted for, work of women. It is the very glue that binds us together, and yet we are blind to it; a woman’s work remains invisible. 
    Rosalind Franklin knows that to be a woman in a man’s world is to be invisible. In the 1950s science is a gentleman’s profession, and it appears after WWII that there are plenty of colleagues who want to keep it that way. 
    After being segregated at Cambridge, then ignored and put down in the workplace, she has no intention of being seen as a second-class citizen and throws everything into proving her worth. But despite her success in unlocking the very secret of life, the ultimate glory is claimed by the men she left in her wake. 
    Inspired by the true story of a woman so many tried to silence, Rosalind is a tale of hope and perseverance, love and betrayal … of real-life lessons in chemistry. 
    ‘A poignant, compelling novel that takes us into the heart and mind of Rosalind Franklin as she struggles for recognition in a man’s world’ Louisa Treger 
    ‘Loved this immersive journey into the life of a woman who changed the world’s understanding of what makes us who we are’ Emily Chung 
    ‘An engaging novel that intertwines the personal and the universal like braided strands of DNA’ Luna McNamara 
    ‘Rosalind paints a shocking and necessary portrait of institutional misogyny in mid-century science’ Nikki Marmery
    Show book