Being the "other"

Naomi Wallace and the middle East

Ismail Khalidi

pp. 211-213

in: Scott T. Cummings, Erica Stevens Abbitt (eds), The theatre of Naomi Wallace, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

I first read and then saw In the Heart of America as a 21-year-old student. The play entered my life at a moment when, as a Palestinian-American, I found myself alienated, angry, and without hope in a post-9/11 United States overflowing with war, racism, and torture. I was struck by Naomi Wallace's masterful and poetic storytelling. It was revelatory to see an American writer tackle the Middle East and the ever-taboo subject of Palestine with such nuance and imagination and at the same time such a fierce sense of justice and such a firm and courageous grasp on history. To connect the Gulf War with Palestine and Vietnam as well as with racism and homophobia in the United States, as Naomi does so seamlessly in In the Heart of America, was to me a subversive act of solidarity and a stroke of genius.