Ongoing return : mapping memory and storytelling in Palestine / Rana Barakat.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barakat, Rana, author.

Series:

Critical indigeneities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Palestinian Nakba, 1947-1948--Personal narratives.

Palestinian Nakba, 1947-1948.

Palestinian Arabs--Israel--Lifta--Biography.

Palestinian Arabs.

Arab-Israeli conflict--Historiography.

Arab-Israeli conflict.

Indigenous peoples--Research--Methodology.

Indigenous peoples.

Collective memory.

Place attachment--Palestine.

Place attachment.

Barakat, Rana--Family.

Barakat, Rana.

Lifta (Israel)--History.

Lifta (Israel).

Physical Description:

xxi, 283 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2026]

Summary:

"In Palestine, a walk across the landscape is a journey of return that defies time, layered with sediments of personal experience and collective peoplehood. For Palestinian scholar Rana Barakat, the experience of place is guided by the stories and memories of her grandmother, who was among the 750,000 people forcibly displaced in 1948 by the newly formed Israeli government. Since then, the violence of settler colonialism has actively prevented the return of Palestinian refugees, including those from Lifta, her family's ancestral village. In the present, the settler state of Israel seems to control the fate of the remaining structures in Lifta, enforcing so-called development plans that limit access and leave the valley appearing frozen in time. By gathering stories from family and community members alongside archival sources and lived experience in the West Bank under Israeli occupation, however, Barakat reveals the way storytelling provides a form of ongoing return to a once-thriving village and to Palestine itself. One of the first books to position Palestinian studies within Indigenous studies, Barakat offers a rich perspective on Palestinian history and lives today. Embedded in a deeply personal journey, Ongoing Return takes the reader through the past via the present and dares to imagine futures for Palestine and its people"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part I. Introduction: Walking through history

A historical intervention: Palestine, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and "Red Indians"

The museumification of place: a preserved past in a settler present

The place of possibilities and return: history in the present to imagine the future

Part II. A people's memory: Ayam al-Balad, the days of our homeland

Lifta and life stories as stories of our living

In lieu of a conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1469680300

9781469680309

1469680297

9781469680293

OCLC:

1512300652

Publisher Number:

90104338335