Three Mothers, Three Daughters: Palestinian Women's Stories (Cultural Studies (New York, N.Y.).)

A collaboration between an Israeli psychologist and a Palestinian school teacher. This highly original book recounts the surprisingly candid stories of three Palestinian mothers and their daughters. Beautifully told and sensitively edited, these linked narratives bear witness to their experiences of Israeli occupation, their memories of the wars of 1948 and 1967, and the profound changes that have occurred in their political and personal lives. "The complexity of the women's lives and stories and the ways in which they portray themselves in the book make this work of value to anthropologists, as well as to scholars in women's studies, oral history, Middle East studies, and sociology." -Journal of Palestine Studies

Gorkin, a Jewish-American psychologist, and Othman, a Palestinian special education teacher, have assembled interviews with three mother-daughter pairs. One pair comes from East Jerusalem, another from a refugee camp in the West Bank, and the third from an Arab village within Israel. In the telling of their personal stories, the women reveal a great deal about the turbulent history of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship. Their stories make it clear that changes that have occurred in the lives of Palestinian women, in the areas of education, work, and personal freedom, have not come easily. The authors live and work in the Jerusalem area. The volume includes a glossary; it lacks a subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

Gorkin (Days of Honey, Days of Onion, Univ. of California, 1993), a Jewish American psychologist living in Israel, and Othman, a Palestinian special education teacher, have teamed up to capture, through numerous interviews with women of different generations, candid and valuable accounts of the ways Palestinian Arab women see themselves and their roles relative to a changing yet still conservative society. The authors chose three mother- daughter couples from geographically diverse areas: a refugee camp on the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and an Israeli Arab village. Through these oral narratives, the reader come to see generational changes at play especially in the areas of education, choice of spouse and marriage, and employment. These women tell their stories in the first person in a spontaneous, vividly narrative that is not low on emotions and nostalgia. This book serves as a starting point for the understanding of an often-forgotten element in political and historical accounts of a tumultuous Middle East. Suitable for academic and women's studies collections.Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N.Y.

Three Mothers, Three Daughters: Palestinian Women's Stories is the product of an unusual collaboration. Michael Gorkin is a Jewish-American psychologist and Rafiqa Othman is a Palestinian special education teacher. Both live and work in the Jerusalem area. Together they have produced this remarkably intimate portrait of Palestinian women. As the title suggests, three mother-daughter pairs are represented in this study. One pair comes from East Jerusalem, another from a refugee camp in the West Bank near Bethlehem, and another from an Arab village within Israel. In poignant detail each woman relates her unique story, and in the end these six individual voices tell us a great deal about the turbulent history of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship. Recollections of highly personal events like courting, marriage, and childbirth are interwoven with memories of upheavals such as the wars of 1948 and 1967, all of which have deeply affected these women, albeit in different ways. The linked stories of mothers and daughters make it clear that profound changes have occurred in the lives of Palestinian women during this century - in the areas of education, work, political involvement, and personal freedom. And yet each woman makes evident, whether in anger or resignation, that none of these changes have come easily.