Susan Abulhawa (Arabic: سوزان أبو الهوى; born June 3, 1970) is a Palestinian-American scientist, writer and activist. Her first novel, Mornings in Jenin, was translated into 32 languages and sold more than a million copies. The sales and reach of her debut novel made Abulhawa the most widely read Palestinian author of all time.[1] Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), was translated in 19 languages. Against the Loveless World, her third novel, was released in August 2020, also to critical acclaim.[2][3][4] She is a human rights activist and animal rights advocate[5] and founded the children’s organization Playgrounds for Palestine.
Early life and education
Abulhawa's parents, born in At-Tur a neighborhood on the Mount of Olives east of the Old City of Jerusalem, were refugees of the 1967 war. Her father, according to one account, "was expelled at gunpoint; her mother, who was studying in Germany at the time, was unable to return and the couple reunited in Jordan before moving to Kuwait, where Abulhawa was born in 1970".[6]
Her parents split shortly after her birth and Abulhawa's childhood was turbulent, moving between Kuwait, the United States, Jordan, and Palestine. She lived in the United States with an uncle until she was 5, then spent several years moving between relatives in Jordan and Kuwait. She lived in Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi, a Jerusalem orphanage, from the age of 10 to 13.[6]
Abulhawa recounts that at 13 she returned to the US, where she lived with her father briefly before entering the foster care system.[5]
In July 2001, Abulhawa founded Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-governmental children’s organization dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children and build playgrounds in Palestine and UN refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria.[9] The first playground was erected in early 2002.[10][11][12]
Abulhawa is signatory to the boycott campaign against Israel, including the cultural boycott. She gave the keynote address at one of the first campus BDS conferences at the University of Pennsylvania.[13] Abulhawa said the BDS movement was "one of the most effective ways to promote Palestinian rights and achieve justice against Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing".[14]
In 2013, Abulhawa declined an invitation from Al Jazeera to participate in a discussion about the Nakba with three or four Israelis, having been asked by the producer to participate as the only Palestinian as they needed her to "balance things out".[17][18] In her letter explaining her refusal to participate, she stated:
Imagine Germany never acknowledged the Jewish holocaust. Imagine, we are living in an era where Jews are still fighting for basic recognition of their pain. Then imagine that on the day in which Jews engage in solemn remembrance of their greatest collective wound, television shows choose to feature German sons and daughters of Nazis in a discussion expressing differing views on whether or not and/or how Germany should deal with the memory of the genocide their country committed. And imagine, of course, there is a token Jew “to balance out” such an ill-timed and inappropriate public conversation.[18]
On 29 November 2024, Abulhawa was invited by the Oxford Union to debated the motion, “This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide”. She spoke as member of the team in favor of the proposition together with Miko Peled and Mohammed El-Kurd. The motion was carried with a majority of 278 to 59. Later the Oxford Union deleted her original[19] recording on Youtube and uploaded a censored version. The union had folded to demands by Zionists, who had been “rewriting history for the past eight decades,” Abulhawa wrote.[20][21]
Writing
Abulhawa's political and romantic fiction is written in English, yet it is deeply rooted in the land and language of her ancestors. Her first language in which she learned to read and write was Arabic.[9]
She is a contributing author to two anthologies, Shattered Illusions (Amal Press, 2002) and Searching Jenin (Cune Press, 2003).
Her debut novel The Scar of David (2006), republished as Mornings in Jenin (2010), is a multigenerational family epic spanning five countries and more than sixty years, focuses on the effects on Palestinians of the Israeli occupation. It became an international bestseller translated into 32 languages.[6][23] Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), a novel of family, love and loss centered on Gaza, met a vast global readership and critical acclaim. Her third novel Against the Loveless World was published in 2020.[18]
In addition to three novels, in 2013 Abulhawa published a collection of poetry entitled My Voice Sought the Wind.[24]
"Memories of an un-Palestinian story, in a can of tuna" in an anthology: Penny Johnson; Raja Shehadeh (eds.) (2012). Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home.[27]
My Voice Sought The Wind, poetry collection (Charlottesville: Just World Books, November 2013)[28]
^Abulhawa, Susan (2009). "Palestinians Will Never Forget". Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. American Educational Trust. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
^Abulhawa, Susan (2012). "Memories of an un-Palestinian story, in a can of tuna". In Johnson, Penny; Shehadeh, Raja (eds.). Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home. New Delhi: Women Unlimited. ISBN978-8188965731. OCLC796756354.
Mohammed Alwuraafi, Ebrahim (2024). "Narrating the Other Half of the Palestinian Story: Reading Susan Abulhawa's Novels as Counternarratives". International Critical Thought. 14 (1): 119–142. doi:10.1080/21598282.2024.2325840.
