Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan

Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms

by Steven Salaita

Steven Salaita’s ambitious and thought-provoking work compares the dynamics of settler colonialism in the United States related to Native Americans with the circumstances in Israel related to the Palestinians, revealing the way in which politics influences literary production. The author’s original approach is based not on similarities between the two disparate settler regions but rather on similarities between the rhetoric employed by early colonialists in North America and that employed by Zionist immigrants in Palestine. Meticulously examining histories, theories, and literary depictions of colonialism and its interethnic dialects, Salaita identifies the commonalities in the myths employed by both groups as well as the “counter-discourse” cultivated in the literature of resistance by native peoples. He complements his analysis with personal observations of Palestinians in Lebanese refuge camps, where he encountered a sympathetic perception of American Indians. The Holy Land in Transit presents one of the first intercommunal studies to assess the ways in which indigenous authors react to analogous colonial dynamics. With great perception and energy the author offers a fresh contribution to an emerging frame of reference for historical, political, literary, and cultural investigation.

234 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2006

About the author

I teach English at Virginia Tech and write about Arab Americans, Indigenous peoples, race and ethnicity, and literature. I live with my beloved wife, my half-blind bichon frise, and my nutty orange tabby in Blacksburg, Virginia. The little fellow in the picture with me is my son, Ignatius, the fiery one.

Reviews

[david-baptiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

For along time I have been very interested in the similarities among the US American polices, constructions and treatment of American Indians and those of Israel's treatment, construction, policies towards the Palestinians. (I've often wondered if the USA's open backing of the Israeli policies is not made possible in good part by the treatment of the American Indians.)
Among American Indian group meetings the subject comes up fairly often, but outside this sphere, it has been hard to find a discussion of the issues in these terms. Steven Salaita has written a book one dreamed of there someday existing in the world--a superb study of these questions, their histories, their rhetorics and configurations within literature and history, journalism and Nationalist and racialist myth. I've been really excited to be reading this book. It opens up so many areas necessary for a deeper examination and understanding of the ways that genocide and ethnic cleansing become "moral" and "justified" through language itself, building rhetorics of myth which erase history along with peoples, topographies, geographies, cultures.