Humble Mumbles   /     34. Penina on Souli : a joint Jewish​-​American / Palestinian book project

“When I first met him, it was at my mom’s house in Minnesota…
My mom is a rabbi.. He was giving a talk about his story and she loved him–as many middle-aged Jewish women do–he’s an incredibly charming person; that’s one of the pieces of his story… ”

Penina Eilberg-Schwartz is a Jewish-American writer/poet and electric guitar player with San Francisco-based band Little Teeth writing a nontraditional biography with and about her friend and former romantic partner Sulaiman Khatib, the Palestinian co-founder of Combatants for Peace.

“We’ve known each other for 10 years and… He’s been a really powerful and strange force in my life and the dynamics … between us in the writing of the book, I think, have a lot to say and point to and question about other relationships in the context of The Conflict… I sort of see the book as joint struggle. I’m very aware of my position as a white Jewish-American writing a Palestinian story. I’m also aware that I’m a much younger woman and he’s an older man and there are certain dynamics that come along with that–and we used to have a romantic relationship–so that also frames our friendship now and our way of working and that’s a pretty… controversial thing, I think, in this context. There’s a lot of things that scare me about that… but I think also a lot of potential for doing something different than is usually done in literature about Israel/Palestine.”