Wafa Ghnaim brings traditional Palestinian embroidery to life by resuscitating its roots as a powerful, provocative, and profound storytelling tool used by Palestinian women for hundreds of years to document their stories, observations, and experiences.
Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing is the companion piece to the exhibit held at the Oriental Institute from November 11, 2006 to March 25, 2007. It is an overview of the colourful and distinctive clothing of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Palestine. The richly illustrated text discusses the construction of traditional dresses, the materials and dyes employed, and clothing and embroidery in the years following 1948. Garments from many regions are illustrated and described. The volume includes a glossary of Arabic terms and a checklist to the exhibit.
Rifqa is Mohammed El-Kurd’s debut collection of poetry, written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanafani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature. The book narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah--an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations. The book, named after the author’s late grandmother who was forced to flee from Haifa upon the genocidal establishment of Israel, makes the observation that home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of 1948 Nakba, but are in fact a continuation of it: a legalized, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.
THE TRADITIONAL COSTUMES OF THE Palestinian villagers and Bedouin are of exceptional beauty and diversity, especially the festive costumes of the women with their lavish silk embroidery and patchwork and their dramatic headdresses encrusted with coins. This book surveys male and female fashions from the early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, and describes the main regional styles of costume, their materials and ornamentation, against the background of Palestinian life and culture. The emphasis throughout the book is on the social and symbolic significance of costume, and the final chapters analyze in detail the language of costume in the context of the wedding. The book is based on extensive field research the author has conducted at intervals since 1967 among Palestinians in Israel, the Occupied Territories, and Jordan. The illustrations include studio photographs of magnificent garments in the British Museum and other collections, archive photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and recent photographs of costumes still made and worn.
This book looks at the intricate patterns and diverse designs of 19th and early 20th century Palestinian village costumes. Palestinian dresses, jackets, head-veils and head-dresses are made from a variety of beautiful fabrics: handwoven cotton or linen, left natural or dyed indigo-blue; and brightly coloured silks, taffetas, velvet and wool. Embroidery from Palestine describes and illustrates diverse decorative techniques and patterns against the backdrop of traditional Palestinian village life and its ceremonies. The examples are drawn from the British Museum's outstanding collection, one of the best in the world, and include some rare and exceptionally beautiful garments.
The historical and cultural richness of Palestine is reflected visually in its costume and embroidery. Distinguished by boldness of color, richness of pattern, and diversity of style, and combined with great needlework skill, these textiles have long played an important role in Palestinian culture and identity and manifested themselves in every aspect of Palestinian life. Based on over twenty-five years of extensive field research and the culling of museum resources and publications from around the world, this book presents the most exhaustive and up-to-date study of the origins of Palestinian embroidery and costume--from antiquity through medieval Arab textile arts to the present. It documents region by region the evolution of costume and the textile arts in Palestine in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is lavishly illustrated with over 500 full-color photographs from the highly praised Munayyer Collection, which includes a whole range of embroidered textiles from traditional costumes and coin headdresses of Palestinian village women to cloaks and jackets worn by village men to belts, sashes, and footwear. The exquisite colors of the silk stitching on natural linens are a feast for the eye. The sumptuous photography and author's well-informed text greatly enrich our appreciation of Palestinian embroidery and make this book a valuable resource that displays this unique art in all its splendor.
A profound and searching exploration of the herbs and land-based medicines of Lebanon and Cana’an—a vital invitation to re-member our roots and deepen relationship with the lands where we live in diaspora Tying cultural survival to earth-based knowledge, Lebanese ethnobotanist, sovereignty steward, and cultural worker Layla K. Feghali offers a layered history of the healing plants of Cana’an (the Levant) and the Crossroads (“Middle East”) and asks into the ways we become free from the wounds of colonization and displacement. Feghali remaps Cana’an and its crossroads, exploring the complexities, systemic impacts, and yearnings of diaspora. She shows how ancestral healing practices connect land and kin—calling back and forth across geographies and generations and providing an embodied lifeline for regenerative healing and repair. Anchored in a praxis she calls Plantcestral Re-Membrance, Feghali asks how we find our way home amid displacement: How do we embody what binds us together while holding the ways we’ve been wrested apart? What does it mean to be of a place when extraction and empire destroy its geographies? What can we restore when we reach beyond what’sbeen lost and tend to what remains? How do we cultivate kinship with the lands where we live, especially when migration has led us to other colonized territories? Recounting vivid stories of people and places across Cana’an, Feghali shares lineages of folk healing and eco-cultural stewardship: those passed down by matriarchs; plants and practices of prenatal and postpartum care; mystical traditions for spiritual healing; earth-based practices for emotional wellness; plant tending for bioregional regeneration; medicinal plants and herbal protocols; cultural remedies and recipes; and more. The Land in Our Bones asks us to reclaim the integrity of our worlds, interrogating colonization and defying its “cultures of severance” through the guidance of land, lineage, and love. It is an urgent companion for our times, a beckoning call towards belonging, healing, and freedom through tending the land in your own bones.
Set off on a thrilling journey around the world in this incredible atlas for kids - packed full of beautiful illustrations and photographs. Discover the world map-by-map with this exciting world atlas book for children, featuring more than 50 maps! Each page is filled with fascinating information, facts and colorful illustrations of our world. Children aged 7-9 will love to learn all about the many countries, cultures, people and animals of the world through vibrant maps. Each map is bursting with information, combining colorful icons with photographs representing key points about each country. The atlas also includes a world map poster, with a political map for each continent - and children are shown how to read a map and use a key, compass, and scale! Inside the pages of this atlas book for children, you'll find: - Information that supports the curriculum, with colorful icons and photographs that show people and places, animals, food, historical sites, industry, and habitats. - More than 50 specially commissioned maps of the world featuring countries and continents in full-color detail. - Bite-sized facts and figures about each country making it easy for children to understand. - Diagrams that compare climates, population, mountains and rivers, famous sites, and natural wonders of the world. Children's Illustrated Atlas brings the world to life with vivid maps and fascinating facts about the countries of the world, making it the perfect gift for little geographers. This charming and informative book is a key addition to every child's library.