Sarah Aziza on 'The Hollow Half': Generational Trauma, Exile, and Gaza

The Hollow Half: Memoir of Bodies and Borders

• 💡 Sarah Aziza's memoir, "The Hollow Half," explores her recovery from anorexia, which nearly proved fatal in 2019, linking it to the generational trauma experienced by her Palestinian family due to their history of exile.
• 🧠 The book examines the author's personal struggle with mental health, initially viewed through a Western medical lens as an individual disease, but later understood as deeply connected to her family's history and the broader Palestinian experience.
• 🎯 Aziza reflects on the hollowness of the American dream and the concept of being "half Palestinian," ultimately rejecting this notion to embrace a whole Palestinian identity that encompasses all aspects of her life.

Memory, Exile, and Palestinian Identity

• 🔑 The Arabic word "zikr" (meaning both to remember and to invoke) is central to the memoir, representing the act of recovering erased histories and invoking a call back to Palestine.
• 🗺️ Aziza traces her family's displacement from their ancestral home in 1948, their move to Gaza, and subsequent exiles, highlighting the resilience of her grandmother who survived the Nakba and the 1967 war.
• 🌍 The author uses the privilege of her American passport to revisit Palestine, finding traces of her family's destroyed village and emphasizing the Palestinian drive to connect with their history and inform their future hope.

Voices from Gaza and Global Solidarity

• 🇵🇸 Aziza shares the profound grief and horror of her extended family in Gaza, who have lost over 200 people, and dedicates her book to Gaza, acknowledging the limits of language in describing the ongoing genocide.
• ✍️ She translates poetry from her cousin Nabil, a pharmacist in Gaza, whose writings capture his despair, hope, pain, and hunger amidst the famine, aiming to elevate voices from within Gaza.
• 🎓 Aziza also highlights her cousin Hanin, who, despite displacement and war, brought her graduation gown with her, symbolizing the duality of hope and resilience Palestinians must constantly hold.

Zionism, Imperialism, and Resistance

• ✊ Aziza critiques Zionism as a relentless, totalizing project of anti-life that seeks to erase Palestinians and silence dissent, a project deeply intertwined with the US Imperial Project.
• 🤝 She emphasizes that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, pointing to Jewish solidarity with Palestinians as evidence, and asserts that opposition to massacres, genocide, and ethnic cleansing is a universal moral imperative.
• 🗣️ The author commends the courage of students, journalists, academics, and everyday people protesting these actions, particularly in the US, and calls for continued steadfastness in resisting the brute force of empire.