When author Leyla King, a Palestinian American Episcopal priest, was 14 years old, she began to be aware of her Palestinian heritage, something she had always been oblivious to. In the following years as she attended high school and college, she listened with avid interest to the recollections of her grandmother and aunts, which ignited in her a passion to dig deeper into her family’s history of oppression and displacement.
In 2002, when King had completed her college education, she asked her grandmother, Bahi, if she could spend the bulk of the summer interviewing her about her life growing up in Palestine; fleeing in 1948; living in Damascus, Syria, and Beirut, Lebanon; and finally immigrating to the United States.
Bahi was enthusiastic and shared the stories of women who came before her and those who came afterward. King focuses primarily on the stories of her great-grandmother Aniiseh, Bahi, and herself. Interspersed between these narratives of five generations spanning 100 years are the reminiscences of other family members, recollections about the political turmoil and displacement the family experienced when Israel became a state, and glimpses into the lives and struggles of Palestinian Christians in a climate of hostility and discrimination.
In an end note, King writes, “I have been carrying my grandmother’s stories in my body for more than two decades. They have never been a burden, but ever since that summer when I interviewed her, they have been quickening within me, and I have longed to deliver them safely into the world.”
Daughters of Palestine is a must-read for Christians today as war and starvation in the Middle East continue to affect the lives of Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, our brothers and sisters in Christ. (Eerdmans)
About the Author
Sonya VanderVeen Feddema is a freelance writer and a member of Covenant CRC in St. Catharines, Ontario.