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Curious Land : Stories from Home by Susan Muaddi Darraj (2016, Trade Paperback)

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Susan Muaddi Darraj's short story collection about the inhabitants of a Palestinian West Bank village, Tel al- Hilou, spans generations and continents to explore ideas of memory, belonging, connection, and, ultimately, the deepest and richest meaning of home.

About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of Massachusetts Dartmouth

ISBN-101625342659

ISBN-139781625342652

eBay Product ID (ePID)234963930

Product Key Features

Book TitleCurious Land : Stories from Home

Number of Pages288 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicShort Stories (Single Author)

Publication Year2016

GenreFiction

AuthorSusan Muaddi Darraj

Book SeriesGrace Paley Prize in Short Fiction Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight18.1 Oz

Item Length8.4 in

Item Width5.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

ReviewsA Curious Land places Muaddi Darraj with other hybrid-American authors of African, Latin American, Jewish and other heritages who ensure that our understandings of notions of identity and home remain diverse and complex., A Curious Land humanizes a political situation, offering the reader a way to understand the steady settlement activity of the Israeli occupation through the eyes and ears of the inhabitants of the villagers. The human toll of occupation, the struggle of everyday people who emigrate for safety and security, and the families they leave behind -- all are vividly brought to life in this collection., In reading A Curious Land, it occurred to me that Susan Muaddi Darraj is an archivist -- in an important sense, if not the traditional one. In telling the stories of Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, her stories offer an archive of language, of customs; they record those relations between people that, for lack of a better word, we call 'civilization.', Darraj writes traditional, tragic love stories set among Orthodox Palestinians during periods of historical unrest. A superb collection and a perfect selection for public libraries., If you want to spend time with memorable characters who populate magnetic stories, if you want to an elegant book that enables you to understand something new in subsequent readings, this is the book you want., Darraj's touch is light. She portrays her characters with dignity and complexity. Each generation of Tel al-Hilou's inhabitants reveals the growing Israeli-Palestine conflict. Decade by decade, Darraj shows how conflict spreads, how it figures into and overshadows the daily lives of her characters.... In the midst of the war and the worry, Darraj plants the seeds of love -- romantic love, familial love, and cultural love.... Darraj's writing is neither overly moralistic nor didactic. There is a no judgment or anger in the stories. She shows us one side of a decades-long conflict, with characters struggling for the peace and happiness we all want for ourselves., In A Curious Land both women and men quietly violate both gender and social-group norms, and the good guys are blended and mixed up with the bad guys.... Honor for Darraj is about persistence in trying to find a decent, ordinary life.

Dewey Edition23

TitleLeadingA

Grade FromCollege Graduate Student

Dewey Decimal813/.6

Table Of Content1. The Journey Home 2. Abu Sufayan 3. The Well 4. Rocky Soil 5. Intifada Love Story 6. The Fall 7. Behind the Pillars of the Orthodox Church 8. Village Gossip: The View from the Qahwah 9. Christmas in Palestine Acknowledgments About the Author

SynopsisSusan Muaddi Darraj's short story collection about the inhabitants of a Palestinian West Bank village, Tel al-Hilou, spans generations and continents to explore ideas of memory, belonging, connection, and, ultimately, the deepest and richest meaning of home. A Curious Land gives voice to the experiences of Palestinians in the last century. An excerpt from A Curious Land: When Rabab lowered the magad and clapped-clapped to the well in her mother's too-big slippers, the stone jar digging into her shoulder, she didn't, at first, see the body. The morning sun glazed everything around her -- the cement homes, the iron rails along one wall, the bars on the windows, the stones around the well -- and made her squint her itchy eyes. She was hungry. That was all. They'd arrived here only last night, stopping as soon as Awwad and the men were sure the army had moved south. It must have been the third time in just a few weeks -- collapse the tents, load the mules, disappear into the sands. She hoped this war would end soon, and she didn't really care who won, as long as it ended because they hadn't eaten well in two years. In the past few months, her mother had sold all her gold, except for her bracelet made of liras. It was the only thing left, and she was holding onto it, and Rabab realized, so were they all; she imagined that, the day it was sold, when her mother's wrist was bare, would signal that they were at the end., Winner of the 2016 American Book Award, the 2016 Arab American Book Award, and the 2014 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction Susan Muaddi Darraj's short story collection about the inhabitants of a Palestinian West Bank village, Tel al-Hilou, spans generations and continents to explore ideas of memory, belonging, connection, and, ultimately, the deepest and richest meaning of home. A Curious Land gives voice to the experiences of Palestinians in the last century. An excerpt from A Curious Land: When Rabab lowered the magad and clapped-clapped to the well in her mother's too-big slippers, the stone jar digging into her shoulder, she didn't, at first, see the body. The morning sun glazed everything around her--the cement homes, the iron rails along one wall, the bars on the windows, the stones around the well--and made her squint her itchy eyes. She was hungry. That was all. They'd arrived here only last night, stopping as soon as Awwad and the men were sure the army had moved south. It must have been the third time in just a few weeks--collapse the tents, load the mules, disappear into the sands. She hoped this war would end soon, and she didn't really care who won, as long as it ended because they hadn't eaten well in two years. In the past few months, her mother had sold all her gold, except for her bracelet made of liras. It was the only thing left, and she was holding onto it, and Rabab realized, so were they all; she imagined that, the day it was sold, when her mother's wrist was bare, would signal that they were at the end., Susan Muaddi Darraj's short story collection about the inhabitants of a Palestinian West Bank village, Tel al- Hilou, spans generations and continents to explore ideas of memory, belonging, connection, and, ultimately, the deepest and richest meaning of home.

LC Classification NumberPS3604