An American Feminist in Palestine: The Intifada Years [Hardcover]

Sherna Berger Gluck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1994

In December 1987, with the outbreak of the intifada, American TV beamed dramatic pictures of Palestinian children and older women taking to the streets of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem to confront Israeli soldiers. News stories also reported how a small band of Israeli women dressed in black were taking to the streets in West Jerusalem to challenge their government's policy. Moved by these images and emboldened by the example of the Israelis, Sherna Gluck broke a silence she, like so many Jewish Americans, had kept for so long. Her trip to Occupied Palestine one year later began a journey that introduced her not only to the horrors of Israeli occupation, but to the creativity of the Palestinian resistance movement and its transformative potential, especially for women. Highly sympathetic to the Palestinians, but with vigilantly critical observation, "An American Feminist in Palestine" recounts the author's experiences over the course of three years as she returned repeatedly to a number of villages and refugee camps. Weaving together anecdotes, interviews, and candid observations, she captures the vitality of the early days of the intifada and the problems that later began to plague the movement after the Gulf War. Sherna Berger Gluck directs the Oral History Program and teaches in the Women's Studies Program at California State University, Long Beach. Her previously published books include "Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History" (with Daphne Patai).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not many middle-aged Jewish college professors spend their vacations in occupied Palestine, dodging tear-gas canisters hurled by Israeli soldiers, and visiting-and occasionally staying with-Arab families in overcrowded refugee camps or tiny houses with no central heating. But while Gluck deserves an ``A'' for her efforts at learning firsthand about the Palestinian struggle, she gets lower marks for organization and style. She could have used a better editor, one to convince her to weed out the extraneous, to show more than tell, and above all, to either fully explore issues or leave them out altogether. ``I began to form some clearer ideas about the women's movement,'' goes one typical entry, but instead of explaining those ideas, she writes a few sentences about a lunch date and ends the chapter. An oral historian who teaches at California State University, Long Beach, Gluck's style tends to the trite, as when she describes one Arab acquaintance who dressed in several layers of clothing to ward off the winter chill as being ``hardly a fashion plate'' while a pro-Palestinian rabbi was ``sweet and gentle, a demeanor emphasized further by his fluffy, completely white beard.'' For those itching to learn how families and feminists coped in the West Bank, Gluck's experiences are worth reading, others might want to wait for a more eloquent account.

Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"[A] thoughtful Jewish feminist look at the struggles between Israel and Palestine during the intifada years." --Feminist Bookstore News "Her sensitive and vivid account evokes [the intifada's] hope and despair, its failures and achievements, and its unending human significance." --Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "...a serious and conscious effort to grapple with the diversity in feminist thought and practice while resisting the imposition of her own brand of 'Western' feminism on Palestinian women." --Rabab Abdulhadi, National Board, Union of Palestinian Women's Associations in North America "Sherna Berger Gluck communicates the voices of Palestinians, especially Palestinian women, quite compellingly. Careful not to impose the constructs of Western feminism on the women she meets, Gluck is also disarmingly frank in revealing her own personal dilemmas, making her testimony all the more poignant and necessary." --Souad R. Dajani, Antioch College, and author of Eyes without a Country: Searching for a Palestinian Strategy of Liberation "The critical questions raised by Gluck--a feminist, a Jew, a U.S. academic and activist--in the course of four visits to the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip loom no less large and significant, even now as Israel and Arafat's PLO seek to implement the terms of their 1993 agreement." --Barbara Harlow, University of Texas "In the years ahead, the need for all Jews and Palestinians to hear each other's voices will remain urgent. I hope Gluck's account will inspire more of us to listen to the Other--and so become larger ourselves." --Jonathan Boyarin, author of Storm from Paradise: The Politics of Jewish Memory "Not many middle-aged Jewish college professors spend their vacations in occupied Palestine, dodging tear-gas canisters hurled by Israeli soldiers, and visiting--and occasionally staying with--Arab families in overcrowded refugee camps or tiny houses with no central heating. For those itching to learn how families and feminists coped in the West Bank, Gluck's experiences are worth reading..." --Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr (August 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566391903
• ISBN-13: 978-1566391900
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,342,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An honest and telling account of the author's travels., September 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: American Feminist In Palestine: The Intifada Years (Paperback)

This was a wonderful book. Gluck, an American raised as a Jew, traveled to Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza on several occassions during the Intifada. This is her account. She gives an admittingly Western feminist perspective, but is very careful not to impose her own assumptions and beliefs on the situation. Instead she tells it like it is.

Gluck tells the reader of the conditions the Palestinians have had to put up with under Israeli occupation. She shows the variety of ways the Palestinians have responded, paying particular attention to women's roles and the way women's lives have changed during the occupation and the uprising (Intifada).

A good book to read if you want to get a beginning perspective of the Middle East conflict. This particularly gives an account that is much different from the American media's. Highly reccommended.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars UGGH, more anti Israel Propaganda from a Feminist, February 11, 2007

By 

Allyson Rowen Taylor "Allyson Rowen Taylor" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Feminist In Palestine: The Intifada Years (Paperback)

This book, is an easy read, not terribly intellectual or well researched. However, the most glaring issue is the one that is not discussed. How an one be a feminist, gay, and demand equal rights when non of the aforementioned would be allowed in "Palestine". When gay men are hung in the town square, and free speech is not allowed, it is easy to critique Israel and call this contry names, and you are free to do so. However, the real victims of the Intifada are not only the Israeli's, but the Palestinians who had to live under the rape of Palestine by Arafat, (Suha his "wife" is now living in a 15,000.00 dollar a day hotel suite in Paris), and the current rape of the land by HAMAS. Ms. Gluk should try to change the ways of terrorists and those who plunder public funds, and then lets address peace.