My Happiness Bears No Relation To Happiness

Topics:
  • Israel/Palestine
  • Arts & Culture
  • Literature
Guests:
Adina Hoffman, the author of My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century, is also the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood. She is one of the founders and editors of Ibis Editions, a small press that publishes translations from Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, French, and the other languages of the Levant. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe, New York Newsday, Raritan, Tin House, the Jewish Quarterly, and on the World Service of the BBC.  She and Peter Cole are currently writing about the Cairo Geniza.
Hosts:
Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark
Broadcast Date: 
Aug 2 2009
Description: 

In My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness Adina Hoffman has written the first biography of a Palestinian writer published in English.  We talk with her about Taha Mohammed Ali, a self-educated pe asant whose village, Saffuriyya was destroyed in 1948, and who became a souvenir shop owner in Nazareth and a unique poetic voice.  Our segment includes some readings of Taha Mohammed Ali's poetry by him, with his translator, Peter Cole.

Entire episode from this date
Episode: August 2, 2009