Table of Contents

Introduction - Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha

Part I: Theorizing the Nakba and Oral History
1. Decolonising Methodology, Reclaiming Memory: Palestinian Oral Histories and Memories of the Nakba - Nur Masalha
2. Feminism, Indigenousness and Settler Colonialism: Oral History, Memory and the Nakba - Nahla Abdo

Part II: Between Epistemology and Ontology: Nakba Embodiment
3. What Bodies Remember: Sensory Experience as Historical Counterpoint in the Nakba Archive - Diana Allan
4. The Time of Small Returns: Affect and Resistance During the Nakba - Lena Jayyusi

Part III: Archiving the Nakba through Palestinian Refugee Women’s Voices
5. Nakbah Silencing and the Challenge of Palestinian Oral History - Rosemary Sayigh
6. Shu’fat Refugee Camp Women Authenticate an Old ‘Nakba’ and Frame Something ‘New’ while Narrating It - Laura Khoury
7. Gender Representation of Oral History: Palestinian Women Narrating the Stories of their Displacement - Faiha Abdel-Hadi

Part IV: The Nakba and 48 Palestinians
8. The Ongoing Nakba: Urban Palestinian Survival in Haifa - Himmat Zubi
9. Suffourieh: A Continuous Tragedy - Amina Qablawi Nasrallah
10. The Sons and Daughters of Eilaboun - Hisham Zreiq
11. ‘This Is Your Father's Land’: Palestinian Bedouin Women Encounter the Nakba in the Naqab - Safa Abu-Rabi’a

Part V: Documenting Nakba Narratives from the Gaza Strip and the Shatat
12. The Young Do Not Forget - Mona Al-Farra
13. Gaza Remembers: Narratives of Displacement in Gaza's Oral History - Malaka Mohammad Shwaikh
14. ‘Besieging the Cultural Siege’: Mapping Narratives of Nakba through Orality and Repertoires of Resistance - Chandni Desai

Promotional Information

A definitive study of the Palestinian Nakba, interweaving oral testimony from 1948 and the present day to reveal an ongoing process aimed at the erasure of Palestinian history and memory.

About the Author

Nahla Abdo is professor of sociology at Carleton University, Canada. She has previously worked as a consultant on gender and women’s rights for the United Nations, the European Union, and the Palestinian Ministry for Women’s Affairs. Her previous books include Captive Revolution (2014) and Women in Israel: Gender, Race and Citizenship (Zed 2011).

Nur-eldeen (Nur) Masalha is a Palestinian historian and a member of the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS, University of London. He was previously a professor of religion and politics at St Mary's University, and a research fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington D.C. His previous books include The Palestine Nakba (Zed 2012) and The Bible and Zionism (Zed 2007).

Reviews

[A] groundbreaking anthology on the 1948 Palestinian dispossession, which saw hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed and depopulated, and over 750,000 Palestinians transformed into stateless refugees ... This book should be read by anyone with an interest in the field and will be a highly valuable addition to courses on the history of the Nakba and Palestine, as well as to those pertaining to oral history; memory and trauma studies; human rights; and postcolonial, feminist, and Indigenous critical studies.
*Journal of Palestine Studies*

Apart from its prestige as an academic work that stays authentic to the voice of the Palestinian people, the book is also home to a simple truth…: “I am Palestinian, and I do not have another land".'
*Middle East Monitor*

A passionate and ambitious work of politically engaged scholarship that positions itself as an actor in the fight to change the world. This is cultural activism at its best.
*Ahdaf Soueif, author of Cairo: My City, Our Revolution*

A landmark intervention, this cross-disciplinary book provides innovative analytical frameworks for studying the persistent erasure of Palestine. This insightful and comprehensive work proposes alternative ways of knowing and telling, rearticulating the Nakba as an ongoing process of dispossession.
*Ella Shohat, NYU, and author of On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements*

An impressive collection and a very significant contribution to the scholarly work on the oral history of the Nakba.
*Ilan Pappé, co-editor of Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid*

Reveals the full magnificence of Palestinian responses to Israel’s systematic post-1948 programme of memoricide. Abdo and Masalha are here establishing a new interdisciplinary field, Nakba Studies, in which Palestinians become subjects and agents in their own history.
*John Docker, University of Western Australia*

A wide-ranging collection by leading oral historians, its moving first person narratives confirm the reparative force of listening to voices which have been silenced in the ongoing colonization of Palestine.
*Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University*

Moving and acutely observed, this timely and necessary anthology is an indispensable addition for all readers concerned with the Israeli colonisation of Palestine.
*Ronit Lentin, author of Thinking Palestine*

Breathtaking in scope, its compelling essays complicate our understanding of the Nakba, rendering it both more visceral and historically profound. It is an invaluable contribution to oral history, gender studies and the broader genre of genocide studies.
*Sherna Berger Gluck, Director Emerita of the Oral History Program, California State University*