Gaza Mom

""Written by a heart-wrenched mother, Gaza Mom is nevertheless matter of fact and more than occasionally bitterly funny. The tales of El-Haddad's day-to-day sufferings as a resident in a conflict-laden area are tough. In 2005, writing from Gaza City, she muses, 'You know things ain't right when a child has become so accustomed to warplanes that he confuses them with birds.' Sometimes there are sonic booms that shake the house. Neighborhood children are shot in the face. Besides the horrors of war and the joys of parenting, El-Haddad also talks about her struggle to maintain a life as an independent woman within a culture that can often be restrictive. While conducting serious phone interviews with hot-button political figures, she's breastfeeding her child or cleaning up a mess. When she touches on this juggling act in her writing, she conveys an impressive sense of ease, but also reveals, naturally, some pride in all that she has managed. El-Haddad's sweet anecdotes about parenting are enjoyable to read. The firsthand accounts of life in a city under siege, with a rapidly growing population and seemingly endless tensions, are gripping. This book directly points at the self-destructiveness of any kind of war. El-Haddad's stories cut past bias and plainly show how stupid and brutal it really is out there."" --M.J. Corey, make/shift: feminisms in motion ""As I write this, I have never met Laila al-Haddad, but yet I have known her for years--first through her blog Raising Yousef, her journalism, and by her handle @Gazamom on Twitter. It was through Laila's pioneering blog that I made my first 'visits' to Gaza--a place I have never physically been precisely because of the situation she describes. The journey she chronicles in this book is intensely personal, and yet it is one Palestinians, exiles and wandering souls all over the world will recognize. The realities of life in Gaza are hard. But Laila's razor-sharp observations, tenderness, and humor make her throughout this book--a wonderful traveling companion. It's a journey I highly recommend."" --Ali Abunimah, founder of Electronic Intifada ""Laila El-Haddad writes with passion and uncompromising honesty revealing a personal narrative that encapsulates a collective Palestinian experience. Making no pretense at objectivity, Laila challenges the limits of the genre to create for the reader an experience of total immersion beyond his/her comfort zone and shattering the complacency of simply 'not knowing.' Occupation and exile, siege and incursions, oppression and dehumanization, the tragedy of the Palestinian experience unfolds in the fullness of its human expression through Laila's intense and captivating revelations. Her sense of self and identity, sometimes presented with critical distance and irony, remains the dominant vehicle of expression in the multiplicity of Laila's roles as mother, daughter, wife, journalist, blogger, activist--or simply a Gazan Palestinian grappling with her plight as with the fate of her nation."" --Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian parliamentarian and member, PLO Executive Committee ""Through the pulse of the people in a besieged ghetto, and through her voice as a young Palestinian woman navigating the delicate trenches of motherhood, Laila El-Haddad's writing illuminates Gaza's inextinguishable culture of struggle and determination for a better world. Her assessment of the personal and collective impacts of Israel's occupation policy--from trudging through the endless bureaucratic labyrinths of identification papers and travel restrictions, to her everyday conversations with people picking up the pieces of their lives after a bombing--and the piercing analysis of he