Susan Abulhawa saw the censor’s hand before it even touched her piece. “As the Guardian doesn’t typically publish people like me,” she cautioned her editor at the paper, “I want to be sure the edits don’t ‘dilute’ the piece to make it more palatable for their readers. We know a very different Israel than the one presented by the media for decades, and the tendency is to ‘soften’ Palestinian voices.”
“I absolutely understand and I am going to do my best to protect and fight for your piece,” the series editor V (formerly known as Eve Ensler) assured Abulhawa, adding: “I have the profoundest respect for you and your writing.”
It would be hard not to: Abulhawa’s debut novel Mornings in Jenin has sold over 1m copies in 32 languages since it was published in 2006, making her by some counts the most widely read Palestinian author in history. ….more
