Book dossier

Three mothers, three daughters

by Michael Gorkin, Rafiqa Othman

Three Mothers, Three Daughters: Palestinian Women's Stories is the product of an unusual collaboration. Michael Gorkin is a Jewish-American psychologist and Rafiqa Othman is a Palestinian special education teacher. Both live and work in the Jerusalem area. Together they have produced this remarkably intimate portrait of Palestinian women. As the title suggests, three mother-daughter pairs are represented in this study. One pair comes from East Jerusalem, another from a refugee camp in the West Bank near Bethlehem, and another from an Arab village within Israel. In poignant detail each woman relates her unique story, and in the end these six individual voices tell us a great deal about the turbulent history of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship. Recollections of highly personal events like courting, marriage, and childbirth are interwoven with memories of upheavals such as the wars of 1948 and 1967, all of which have deeply affected these women, albeit in different ways. The linked stories of mothers and daughters make it clear that profound changes have occurred in the lives of Palestinian women during this century - in the areas of education, work, political involvement, and personal freedom. And yet each woman makes evident, whether in anger or resignation, that none of these changes have come easily.