CMES Book Talk: My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine

Sami Hermez, PhD, is associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (UPenn 2017), and the award-winning creative nonfiction, My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine (Stanford 2024).

Sireen Sawalha, born in the small village of Kufr Rai in Jenin, Palestine, comes from a family deeply connected to the region's rich history. She works as a social studies teacher in New Jersey. She has been recognized by Cornell University for her outstanding contributions to education in 2022.

In 1967, Sireen Sawalha's mother, with her young children, walked back to Palestine against the traffic of exile. My Brother, My Land is the story of Sireen's family in the decades that followed and their lives in the Palestinian village of Kufr Ra'i. From Sireen's early life growing up in the shadow of the '67 War and her family's work as farmers caring for their land, to the involvement of her brother Iyad in armed resistance in the First and Second Intifada, Sami Hermez, with Sireen Sawalha, crafts a rich story of intertwining voices, mixing genres of oral history, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Through the lives of the Sawalha family, and the story of Iyad's involvement in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hermez confronts readers with the politics and complexities of armed resistance and the ethical tensions and contradictions that arise, as well as with the dispossession and suffocation of people living under occupation and their ordinary lives in such times. Whether this story leaves readers discomforted, angry, or empowered, they will certainly emerge with a deeper understanding of the Palestinian predicament.