Stealing sweet pastries from a vendor's cart, running shoeless from gunfire, adopting the family goat as a pet, spying on Israeli soldiers with her brothers, making friends with the Arabic letter Alef, whom she believed lived in pieces of chalk - all of these are described in a winsome, honest childhood voice.īarakat had to let other voices inside herself recede and allow her childhood voice to speak when she wrote "Tasting the Sky," she said.
In the novel, she recalls her family's escape to Jordan in wartime, their eventual return to Ramallah and the events that unfolded during the family's stay in Barakat's favorite childhood home. Her 2007 young adult memoir, "Tasting the Sky," propelled her to national recognition. Her first visit to the United States was as an intern for the magazine The Nation, and she eventually earned two master's degrees - in journalism and human development - from the University of Missouri.
She writes "every minute, every hour." Writing her thoughts, she said, brings her to her real self and makes those thoughts truly her own.īarakat grew up in the West Bank under periods of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I don't think I can think without writing," she said, scratching her pen in a small notebook even as she spoke. For Palestinian-American author and poet Ibtisam Barakat, writing is not just a pursuit - it is almost a fever.
0 kommentar(er)
