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A review by warlocksarecool21
In My Mother's Footsteps by Mona Hajjar Halaby
medium-paced
5.0
In My Mother’s Footsteps is a beautiful and captivating memoir about a woman returning to her mother’s homeland of Palestine and connecting with her past. In this book, Mona details her experience of living in Ramallah for a year teaching conflict resolution to children at the Ramallah Friends School. Over the course of this year, she investigates her family’s history in Jerusalem and connects it to the larger history of Palestine and how it came to be occupied by Israeli settlers.
While I have been reading a lot about Palestinian history I learned so much on a personal level from this book. Mona’s account was filled with so much love and care for Palestine and the beauty of its people, land and culture. As she shares her family’s history, you learn how people from all walks of life were impacted by the Nakba and how that pain is still felt decades later. I also really liked hearing Mona’s descriptions of all the food, architecture and cultural traditions that she either witnessed or partook in.
I was amazed hearing about Zakia’s (Mona’s mother) childhood before the Nakba, at how Jerusalem was an international, cosmopolitan city, home to Christians, Muslims and Jews from all over the world living in peace together until Israel was formed and that unity was ended. Mona also didn’t shy away from the fact that her family was very privileged to escape mainly unharmed and find relative peace in other countries, while that’s not the case of many Palestinians.
As an educator myself, I really appreciated her stories of her time at the Ramallah Friends School. While she experienced a lot of frustration and irritation, she came away with a lot of valuable lessons about teaching children who’ve experienced trauma with empathy and patience. Her process of teaching the children how to peacefully resolve conflicts, manage their emotions and take accountability was really valuable as well and I hope to utilize her lessons in my own classroom. I also liked seeing how Mona internalized her own lessons about how to bring about change in her mobilization with other Palestinians and allies to remember her people’s past and advocate for a free Palestine.
All of Mona’s accounts serve to highlight the love, joy and resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of Israeli Occupation. In doing so, she also acknowledges the injustices and crimes, past and present, committed against her people by Israel and its settlers and represents the hope that Palestine will one day be free. This memoir is so important and I hope that my review inspires you to pick it up if you haven’t already.
While I have been reading a lot about Palestinian history I learned so much on a personal level from this book. Mona’s account was filled with so much love and care for Palestine and the beauty of its people, land and culture. As she shares her family’s history, you learn how people from all walks of life were impacted by the Nakba and how that pain is still felt decades later. I also really liked hearing Mona’s descriptions of all the food, architecture and cultural traditions that she either witnessed or partook in.
I was amazed hearing about Zakia’s (Mona’s mother) childhood before the Nakba, at how Jerusalem was an international, cosmopolitan city, home to Christians, Muslims and Jews from all over the world living in peace together until Israel was formed and that unity was ended. Mona also didn’t shy away from the fact that her family was very privileged to escape mainly unharmed and find relative peace in other countries, while that’s not the case of many Palestinians.
As an educator myself, I really appreciated her stories of her time at the Ramallah Friends School. While she experienced a lot of frustration and irritation, she came away with a lot of valuable lessons about teaching children who’ve experienced trauma with empathy and patience. Her process of teaching the children how to peacefully resolve conflicts, manage their emotions and take accountability was really valuable as well and I hope to utilize her lessons in my own classroom. I also liked seeing how Mona internalized her own lessons about how to bring about change in her mobilization with other Palestinians and allies to remember her people’s past and advocate for a free Palestine.
All of Mona’s accounts serve to highlight the love, joy and resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of Israeli Occupation. In doing so, she also acknowledges the injustices and crimes, past and present, committed against her people by Israel and its settlers and represents the hope that Palestine will one day be free. This memoir is so important and I hope that my review inspires you to pick it up if you haven’t already.