Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa (; born 1970) is a Palestinian-American writer, and activist. She wrote the novels Mornings in Jenin, The Blue Between Sky and Water, and Against the Loveless World (2020). She founded the children's organization Playgrounds for Palestine.

Early life and education Susan Abulhawa's parents, born in At-Tur, a neighborhood on the Mount of Olives east of the Old City of Jerusalem, were Palestinian refugees of the Six-Day War in 1967. Her father, according to one account, "was expelled at gunpoint; her mother, who was studying in Germany at the time, was unable to return and the couple reunited in Jordan before moving to Kuwait, where Abulhawa was born in 1970."

Her parents split shortly after her birth and Abulhawa's childhood was turbulent, moving between Kuwait, the United States, Jordan, and Palestine. She lived in the United States with an uncle until she was 5, then spent several years moving between relatives in Jordan and Kuwait. She lived in Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi, a Jerusalem orphanage, from the age of 10 to 13.

Abulhawa studied biology at Pfeiffer University in North Carolina, and completed a masters in neuroscience (biomedical science) at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.

Activism In July 2001, Abulhawa founded Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-governmental organization dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children and build playgrounds in Palestine and UN refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria. The first playground was erected in early 2002. She is involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and as a speaker for Al Awda, a Palestinian right of return coalition. Abulhawa has said the BDS movement was "one of the most effective ways to promote Palestinian rights and achieve justice against Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing".

Abulhawa has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa. In 2013, Abulhawa declined an invitation from Al Jazeera Media Network to participate in a discussion about the Nakba with three or four Israelis, having been asked by the producer to participate as the only Palestinian as they needed her to "balance things out". In an explanatory letter, she criticized the premise of the discussion, comparing it to featuring descendants of Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day with a token Jewish participant.

In 2024, Abulhawa declared in light of the Gaza war that "Israel is committing the holocaust of our time, and it is doing it in full view of a seemingly indifferent world." On November 29, 2024, Abulhawa was invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion "This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide". She spoke as a member of a team in favor of the proposition together with Miko Peled and Mohammed El-Kurd. The motion was carried with a majority of 278 to 59. The Oxford Union later deleted her original recording on YouTube and uploaded a censored version. Abulhawa responded that the Union seemed to have yielded to demands from Zionists "as Palestinians struggle to make our voices heard in the midst of a genocide".

Writing Abulhawa's political and romantic fiction is written in English. Her first language in which she learned to read and write was Arabic.

Her debut novel The Scar of David (2006), republished as Mornings in Jenin (2010), is a multigenerational family epic spanning five countries and more than sixty years, focusing on the effects on Palestinians of the Israeli occupation. It became an international bestseller translated into 32 languages.

In 2013 Abulhawa published a collection of poetry entitled My Voice Sought the Wind.

Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), a novel of family, love and loss centered on Gaza City, garnered a global readership and critical acclaim. Her third novel, Against the Loveless World, was published in 2020, again to critical acclaim.

Novels Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010, ). The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2015, ). Against the Loveless World (Bloomsbury, 2020, ).

Other

Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change, New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2017. This Is Not A Border: Reportage & Reflections from the Palestine Festival of Literature, New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Shattered Illusions, anthology (Amal Press, 2002) Searching Jenin, anthology (Cune Press, 2003) My Voice Sought The Wind, poetry collection (Charlottesville: Just World Books, November 2013)

Awards Arab American Book Award Winner The Leeway Foundation Edna Andrade 2003 award for fiction and creative non-fiction Best Books Award for Historic Fiction MEMO Palestine Book Award Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist Arab American Museum Award for Fiction Long-listed for Rathsbones Folio Prize