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Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family, by Najla Said
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A frank and entertaining memoir, from the daughter of Edward Said, about growing up second-generation Arab American and struggling with that identity.
The daughter of a prominent Palestinian father and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her. The fact that her father was the famous intellectual and outspoken Palestinian advocate Edward Said only made things more complicated. She may have been born a Palestinian Lebanese American, but in Said’s mind she grew up first as a WASP, having been baptized Episcopalian in Boston and attending the wealthy Upper East Side girls’ school Chapin, then as a teenage Jew, essentially denying her true roots, even to herself—until, ultimately, the psychological toll of all this self-hatred began to threaten her health.
As she grew older, making increased visits to Palestine and Beirut, Said’s worldview shifted. The attacks on the World Trade Center, and some of the ways in which Americans responded, finally made it impossible for Said to continue to pick and choose her identity, forcing her to see herself and her passions more clearly. Today, she has become an important voice for second-generation Arab Americans nationwide.
- Sales Rank: #249908 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-08-01
- Released on: 2013-08-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
Playwright Said was raised in Manhattan’s Upper West Side as the Palestinian Lebanese American Christian daughter of parents who raised her as a secular humanist. Her father was the world-famous intellectual Edward Said. Idyllic, sun-soaked, early-childhood trips to 1970s Beirut, full of family and love, only slowly betrayed a simmering turmoil therein, and Said spends most of her life understanding and recalibrating her perceptions of her ancestral homelands versus those seen through the lens trained on the Middle East by the world at large. While Najla grows up a prep-school kid in the 1980s and 1990s, she digests narrow views of the Arab character, turns them inward in painful ways, and struggles to understand the complicated patchwork of her identity. Although those with stakes in any of Said’s backgrounds will have a more pointed interest in her explorations, most readers will relate to her ultimately universal discussion of growing up other. Said’s memoir is both a dear tribute to her father’s work and proof that acceptance of one’s roots—the hurdle to success and success itself—is most always hard earned. --Annie Bostrom
Review
"The scholar Edward Said was born in Jerusalem when it was Palestine under the British Mandate, immigrated to the U.S., was baptized an Episcopalian, supported Palestinian independence, married a Lebanese Quaker, and became a prominent professor at Columbia University. No wonder his daughter, Najla, was conflicted about her identity. If Edward's Orientalism provides the intellectual framework for understanding postcolonialism, Najla's memoir, "Looking for Palestine," is the other side of the coin, as those same complex forces tug her life in multiple directions while she tries to understand who she is."--"Daily Beast
""In her engaging memoir, "Looking for Palestine," Najla Said explores the cultural confusions of growing up Arab-American in the1970s and '80s New York City."--"Elle"
"What proves substantive and memorable about this book . . is the author's exploration of her relationship with her family and her social surroundings. . . . her snapshots of personal interaction with her father and their sometimes droll exchanges give the book an undeniably warm and intimate feel."--"San Francisco Chronicle"
"Said's aching memoir explores her coming-of-age as a Christian Arab-American on New York's Upper West Side. . . . [Said's] complex persona, self-deprecationg humor, and focus on the personal rather than the political broaden the appeal of Said's book beyond any particular ethnic, cultural, or religious audience."--"Publishers Weekly "(starred review)
"In an illuminating memoir, the daughter of Edward Said, the writer, academic and symbol of Palestinian self-determination, explores her complex family history and its role in shaping her identity. . . . An enlightening, warm, timely coming-of-age story exploring the author's search for identity framed within the confounding maze of America's relationship with the Middle East."--"Kirkus"
"It can be a difficult story to tell: that of one's discontent in the midst of privilege. And yet with great skill, humor, and poignancy, Ms. Said accomplishes just that. In the end, she is her late father's great inheritor, ever-journeying toward that elusive home."--Alica Erian, author of "Towelhead"
"Najla Said's "Looking for Palestine "is a compassionate and candid book on her courageous coming-of-age in contemporary America. Said is a brilliant, talented and sensitive artist with a larger-than-life, loving father."--Professor Cornel West
"A deeply penetrating, often hilarious, and occasionally devastating account of growing up Arab American. Of course, Najla Said's scramble for her identity is uniquely hers. How many of us, after all, have had world-famous intellectuals as fathers, experienced the civil war in Lebanon first hand, and been kissed on the cheek by Yasir Arafat (which she hated)? But after finally finding the conviction to be at peace with herself, Najla Said has written more than a memoir. Looking for Palestine is a survivor's guide for all of us who live with that feeling of being out of place wherever we are."--Moustafa Bayoumi, author of "How Does it Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America"
"Thoughtful, searching, and open-eyed, "Looking for Palestine "takes readers on a journey into an Arab-American girl's search for identity. The joy and pain of growing up in the long shadow of a brilliant parent, the struggle for meaning and belonging, and the painful dispossession of the Palestinians are all treated with tender care as Najla Said gives us a haunting and singular life story."--Diana Abu-Jaber, author of "Crescent"
About the Author
Najla Said has performed off Broadway, regionally and internationally, as well as in film and television. In April 2010, Said completed a nine-week sold-out off Broadway run of her solo show, Palestine, which features some of the material in this book. She is a frequent speaker and performer at schools across the country, and lives in New York City.
Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
The Two Halves of Ourselves
By Kevin L. Nenstiel
It's tough for girls growing up amid America's images of lithe blonde perfection; girls from non-white backgrounds have it even tougher. So imagine how hard it must be if your father is a world-famous spokesperson for one of Earth's most reviled ethnic groups. Najla Said's father, Palestinian-American professor Edward Said, changed the intellectual landscape with his classic, Orientalism. But that made life only harder for his daughter.
Already celebrated for her elaborate autobiographical one-woman show, having toured theatres and schools internationally with her tale of divided childhood, Najla Said now expands that story for readers beyond the stage. She proves a remarkably bold storyteller, blunt in her desire to expose the false face she spent years building. But unlike recent "confessional" memoirs, often lurid in their disclosures, Said keeps her story both personal and touchingly humane.
Growing up in Manhattan, Najla knew she didn't fit in with the "society girls" at her prep school. Nobody else's dad got regularly interviewed by Ted Koppel. Despite her parents' pride in their Lebanese-Palestinian heritage, she knew more about Jewish culture than her own. Yet she took these differences for granted, as children do, desperate for life to be normal. But the older she got, the more "normal" became a slippery target.
Said's memoir of growing up in her father's long shadow highlights the perils of minority life in modern plural society. She sought her unique identity, separate from her father's magisterial writing, but could not separate herself from the intellectual, heavily Jewish milieu in which she grew. While her father defended his people's rights against Israeli and Arab infractions on the nightly news, she sought a cause of her own.
As the Palestinian intifada and Lebanon's civil war colored global perceptions, Said took marked steps to separate herself from her heritage. She longed for the inclusion of MTV and shopping, and joined her Jewish schoolmates in celebrating World War II heroism. But she couldn't stop being descended from a long line of Arab Christians. The gap in her heritage began manifesting in strange ways, including a long-simmering battle with anorexia.
Readers must not mistake this memoir for a continuation of Said's father's work. Far from his famous academic dissections and literary rhetoric, Najla unpacks private concerns. She tells her story, not pretending to speak for an entire people. Thus, her prose is often episodic, sometimes choppy, but mercifully free of thesis statements and perorations. Said proves George Bernard Shaw's claim, that only the completely personal can be truly universal.
Attending Princeton as Edward Said's only daughter proved a strange new minefield. Everyone expected some genius, some spokesperson for a dispossessed people in the halls of academic prestige--and she just wanted to be an undergraduate. The conflicting forces taking pieces of her spirit left her wondering who she was under the layers of learned response. Sadly, no answers were forthcoming.
As adulthood loomed, and Said's father became ill with the slow cancer that ultimately ended his life, Said discovered she couldn't sustain the duality that dominated her life. She couldn't keep her American upbringing in one pocket, and her Arab heritage in another. Especially after 9/11 polarized American discourse, and temporarily made certain racist expressions acceptable again, she had to find some way to reconcile her two halves.
Easier said than done.
But theatre provided the opportunity she desperately needed. She found a company of similar American-born Arabs who simply wanted the opportunity to tell their strange, conflicting stories. Here, she didn't have to remain eternally eloquent, or be judged as her father's daughter. Her story became one among a chorus of voices, at a time when curiosity and interest in Middle Eastern peoples reached an all-time high.
Said's performances have made her a minor star, but not because of some accident of birth. She shows, through simply telling her story, that the personal struggles we all face have their mirror across culture, and race, and class. She has persuaded people, especially young women, that they needn't face their struggles alone. And she had proven to diverse global audiences that her heritage is an object of beauty.
Najla Said may not be a famous name, not like Edward Said. But in some ways, she's proven herself her father's truest heir. While he wrote about vast cultural forces that conspired to create gulfs between peoples, she writes about ordinary experiences that build bridges between individuals. We can't ignore the heritage of our births, she says. But we can become the architects of our futures.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Sad but Sweet
By George Greene
Najla Said writes with honesty and humor about her sense of vulnerability as an Arab American: how hard it is to be whole when one's identity becomes hyphenated. We hear through her how hard it is at times to bear one's peoplehood as one seeks to make one's own identity. Born in America with roots in the Middle East, her struggle is reminiscent to many who feel what it means to be a part of a minority, who sense what it means to be in exile in the country of one's birth. She shares the experience of her loneliness.
Najla Said takes no political stands; one should not expect any polemics. There is no gossip here. It is about a woman who seeks to make sense of her life so far. When I conclude reading it, I truly wanted to say to her, "Safe journey."
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Quite a insight into other cultures
By C. Cook
I enjoyed reading this book.
It was not difficult nor hard to understand and I read its 258 pages as one sit down with a couple of breaks for food and drink.
I enjoy learning of other cultures and the kinds of things that go on and the sorts of foods and other issues that happen.
This book has all of that.
Najla Said has written here her life story as a child. Most of the book is through her eyes ..and she was a child.....very few portions are written as an adult.
That's what makes it interesting. A childs' story of life as she sees it. No real outright lies...No spin...No poses.
I hate to really get too deep into this book here --because I believe it would spoil it for the reader.
But I would say to you--Get this book and read it. Learn something of Arabs , Palestinians , Lebanese persons , mid-eastern Americans , and folks coming to America just trying to fit in and find their own place in this world.
It certainly opened my eyes to some things of their culture and life style which goes a long way towards understanding them a little better as people.
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