A Video Conference on Ibtisam Barakat’s Tasting the Sky between Students from the Department of English at An-Najah National University and Students from Ithaca College, NY
24 April 2011
The Department of English held the second video conference this semester on Wednesday, 4th April, 2011 in the Library Conference Hall – Old Campus. The conference discussed the autobiography of Tasting the Sky, written by the Palestinian writer Ibtisam Barakat, from the viewpoints of both the students of An-najah University who study the Autobiography course with Dr. Nabil Alawi, and the students of Ithaca College who study the course of Political Justice with Dr. Beth Harris.
Tasting the Sky is a story of a Palestinian childhood which suffered the circumstances of 1967 war. Barakat describes in her autobiography how she and her family were forced to leave to Jordan for a while till the war ended, then returning to the house of her childhood in Ramallah, to say good bye to it later as the Israeli harassments increased. Tasting the Sky, which is narrated from a child’s perspective, transfers the Palestinian position to the world objectively and transparently by using a simple expressive language and a moving discourse.
Students of both universities exchanged many questions and ideas about the autobiography and its relevance to the Palestinian reality, one of which is the need to free one’s self from fear and inner occupation in order to be able to free Palestine from Israeli occupation as Barakat said in a lecture during her visit to An-Najah University last month.
Today, the world is undergoing a lot of accelerating changes which make dialogue and understanding the “other” extremely important. The significance of such conferences lies in the fact that they work as an eye-opening to others’ lives and cultures; they help in creating an atmosphere of dialogue, and so finding more common grounds among cultures.
Tasting the Sky is a story of a Palestinian childhood which suffered the circumstances of 1967 war. Barakat describes in her autobiography how she and her family were forced to leave to Jordan for a while till the war ended, then returning to the house of her childhood in Ramallah, to say good bye to it later as the Israeli harassments increased. Tasting the Sky, which is narrated from a child’s perspective, transfers the Palestinian position to the world objectively and transparently by using a simple expressive language and a moving discourse.
Students of both universities exchanged many questions and ideas about the autobiography and its relevance to the Palestinian reality, one of which is the need to free one’s self from fear and inner occupation in order to be able to free Palestine from Israeli occupation as Barakat said in a lecture during her visit to An-Najah University last month.
Today, the world is undergoing a lot of accelerating changes which make dialogue and understanding the “other” extremely important. The significance of such conferences lies in the fact that they work as an eye-opening to others’ lives and cultures; they help in creating an atmosphere of dialogue, and so finding more common grounds among cultures.
