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Quote by Susan Abulhawa

“I knew I could never again be complete in one place. This was what it meant to be exiled and disinherited - to straddle closed borders, never whole anywhere. To remain in one place meant tearing one's limbs from another.”

Quote by Susan Abulhawa

Book:Against the Loveless World
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Against the Loveless World

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Susan Abulhawa
Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa (born 1970) is a Palestinian-American writer and human rights activist. She is best known for her novel 'Mornings in Jenin', which explores the impact of the 1948 Nakba on a Palestinian family. Her work focuses on Palestinian identity, exile, and resistance, blending personal narrative with historical context. Abulhawa also founded the nonprofit 'Palestine Children's Relief Fund', supporting children in Gaza. Her writing and activism have gained international recognition, though her stance has sparked debate. more

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“We collected our things from our quarters---the ones that had been assigned to us and the ones we had adopted--- and I gathered up all my notes that would slowly metamorphose into The Extinction of Irena Rey. Maybe Grey Eminence was right that writing has to be an engine of extinction. But the first to inhabit a traumatized landscape are often fungi, lichen, slime molds, and species of plants known as "ruderal," a word that derives from the Latin word for "rubble." Maybe the extinction of Irena Rey made the space for a ruderal art, like a book about what happened to her translators.”

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“...we should be remembered for the things we do. The things we do are the most important things of all. They are more important than what we say or what we look like. The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honour heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honour the Pharaohs. Only instead of being made out of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you. That's why your deeds are like your monuments. Built with memories instead of with stone.”

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