Last March, poet, novelist and feminist Alice Walker joined a delegation organized by Code Pink, to travel to the Gaza Strip just weeks after the 22-day Israeli bombardment and invasion. Walker, globally acclaimed for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple, had also traveled to Rwanda, Eastern Congo and other places where she witnessed cruel and barbaric behavior that left her speechless. In an essay on her blog entitled "Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters "the horror" in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel," Walker recounts the stories of the people she met, and offers a lyrical analysis that ties their oppression and struggles to what she and her community experienced growing up in the violence and fear of the segregated American South. The excerpt below begins with her arrival in Gaza after a long overland journey through Egypt.
Coming "home" to Gaza
Rolling into Gaza I had a feeling of homecoming. There is a flavor to the ghetto. To the Bantustan. To the "rez." To the "colored section." In some ways it is surprisingly comforting. Because consciousness is comforting. Everyone you see has an awareness of struggle, of resistance, just as you do. The man driving the donkey cart. The woman selling vegetables. The young person arranging rugs on the sidewalk or flowers in a vase. When I lived in segregated Eatonton, Georgia I used to breathe normally only in my own neighborhood, only in the black section of town. Everywhere else was too dangerous. A friend was beaten and thrown in prison for helping a white girl, in broad daylight, fix her bicycle chain.
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Wonderful article TGIA, which brings great perspective to the tragedy taking place in Palestine as we write.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found most intersting was that she is married to a Jewish man who cannot accept any criticism of Israel's treatment of the native Palestinians and that she does not let this stop her from speaking the truth whatsoever...
ReplyDeleteIf we would all be as truthful as her, in a respectful way, our world would be a much better place to live...I do not agree that the litmus test for free speech is the right to offend others. The litmus test for free speech should be the right to be truthful about all subjects, yet to do so in a respectful way not an offensive way.... The fact that the Zionists are trying to outlaw any criticism of Israel or Zionism, even respectful criticism, as being anti-semitic, means that they do not truly believe in free speech...Yet they will be the first ones to say they have the right to offend Arabs and Muslims as being the litmus test for their free speech rights....Talk about the ultimate double standard....
It really was a beautiful essay. Coincidentally whenever I have thought about the Palestinians I have recalled a line from Walker's book "The Secret to Possessing Joy," in which, it turns out, "the secret to possessing joy is resistance." The book was written long before this essay--and is about another subject entirely--but clearly that's the mindset that informs Walker's thinking, and it may be what she responded to in Gaza.
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