News & opinions from a Palestinian-American
living & working in Ramallah/Al-Bireh, Palestine
![“They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom” [Recommended]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/they-called-me-a-lloness.jpeg)
A Palestinian activist jailed at sixteen after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers illuminates the daily struggles of life under occupation in this moving, deeply personal memoir.
![“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” [Recommended]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/A-Day-in-the-Life-of-Abed-Salama-by-Nathan-Thrall.jpg)
Nathan Thrall received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge. (Publisher’s description)
![From Wisconsin to Gaza to Jenin: An American Writer’s Lived Experience in Palestine [Book Review]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/from-wisconsin-to-gaza-to-jenin-1926401834.jpeg)
The memoir of an American daughter of a German immigrant raised under Nazi Germany, and the mother of three Palestinian Americans, who meets Palestine from the ground level. An eloquent read with nuanced explanations of a multitude of key points about the conflict, explained in depth in extensive endnotes.
![The Wages Of Force: Expansion, Not Peace [Book Review]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/defending-the-holy-land-zeev-maoz.png)
