I came away from Suheir Hammad's performance Wednesday night having broadened my perspective.
The Palestinian-American poet truly shines, in my opinion, when she plays with identity. Suheir identifies herself with many peoples: with Palestinians, with blacks, with Hispanics, with Muslims, with the poor, with artists, with day laborers, with refugees. Her recent book, "Born Palestinian, Born Black," is a testament to her desire to transcend racial and ethnic boundaries. In an interview with Nathalie Handal, she paraphrased the famous African-American poet Audre Lorde as saying that "being black" is a political as well as a cultural identity. In excluding race as a criterion for "blackness," Hammad could be a truly postmodern example of American multiculturalism.
But there was a problem with Hammad's presentation, which I felt detracted from the ideals of human unity and love that she professed. She entreated people - men, Americans, whites, Israelis - not to see and treat her as an "other." But behind her request was a barely concealed hostility, that accused and generalized in a manner similar to the broad-brushing she decried.
There is no doubt that Hammad is angry with the United States and Israel, two countries she sees as representing the worst of empire and racist oppression. Indeed she carries the flyers that were handed out before her performance, titled "Down With American Empire!! Divest From the Apartheid State of Israel," wherever she goes.
It was this anger that left the most lasting impression after she stepped down from the stage. Anger can be beautiful and constructive, but it can also consume the very work it creates.
When Handal asked her what she meant when she wrote, "Longing for a land I have yet to feel under my feet," Hammad replied, "It is an association that I was born with. I don't know what Palestine looks like, what Palestine tastes like, but it is something that is in your blood, and we all carry ancestry around with us."
Unfortunately, Hammad's politics vis-Ã -vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict disparage the very type of ancestral identity she describes. Her "Journal from Palestine," an account of her visit to the Occupied Territories, is revealing in this regard. Leaving for Jordan, Hammad is stopped at a checkpoint and interrogated by a member of the Israeli Defense Forces. He asks her why she had visited Jerusalem. Hammad writes, "Who is this soldier in front of me, with his Russian ancestry and heavy tongue, to ask?"
The apparent irony of this line struck me. Who is this soldier? Someone who, like Hammad, longed for a land he had yet to feel under his feet. Someone who carried Israel in his blood - in his ancestry - for about 2,000 years. One can call the tenacity of the soldier and his predecessors anything, but it is certainly identity. For an author who appropriates blackness as a second skin, how can it be so hard to understand a man who has transformed from Jew to Israeli?
Later Hammad mentions two Arab-Israeli women who are flirting with Israeli soldiers. She says: "(They) are dressed as ... well ... they got the slutty look." Now, for a self-described passionate feminist whom I just saw onstage asking for women's freedom from categorization, this line struck me as incoherent. Eliminating the virgin/slut dichotomy has long been a staple of feminist discourse. Yet Hammad appears comfortable categorizing women who act sympathetically towards her enemies.
Her poetry Wednesday night was eye-opening, but the shortcomings in Hammad's message left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. At one point during her time onstage she instructed us all to "be critical" and "don't believe me." I hope she will forgive me for taking her advice.
Natalie Smolenski '07 is a Middle East Studies concentrator.
