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The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
A brush with death. An ancestral haunting. A century of family secrets. Sarah Aziza’s searing, genre-bending memoir traces three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to the Midwest to New York City—and back.
“You were dead, Sarah, you were dead.” In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza’s crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begin in the hospital cafeteria, when a mysterious incident summons the familiar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother.
In the months following, as she responds to a series of ghostly dreams, Aziza unearths family secrets that reveal the ways her own trauma and anorexia echo generations of violent Palestinian displacement and erasure—and how her fight to recover builds on a century of defiant survival and love. As she moves towards this legacy, Aziza learns to resist the forces of colonization, denial, and patriarchy both within and outside her.
Weaving timelines, languages, geographies, and genres, The Hollow Half probes the contradictions and contingencies that create “nation” and “history.” Blazing with honesty, urgency, and poetry, this stunning debut memoir is a fearless call to imagine both the self and the world anew.
“You were dead, Sarah, you were dead.” In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza’s crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begin in the hospital cafeteria, when a mysterious incident summons the familiar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother.
In the months following, as she responds to a series of ghostly dreams, Aziza unearths family secrets that reveal the ways her own trauma and anorexia echo generations of violent Palestinian displacement and erasure—and how her fight to recover builds on a century of defiant survival and love. As she moves towards this legacy, Aziza learns to resist the forces of colonization, denial, and patriarchy both within and outside her.
Weaving timelines, languages, geographies, and genres, The Hollow Half probes the contradictions and contingencies that create “nation” and “history.” Blazing with honesty, urgency, and poetry, this stunning debut memoir is a fearless call to imagine both the self and the world anew.
12 pages, Audible Audio
First published April 22, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
June 16, 2025
What I appreciated most about this memoir was how Sarah Aziza connected her individual experience of anorexia to her identity as a half-Palestinian woman. Her descriptions of her eating disorder are vivid and highlight the gravity of the disease. She also weaves in history and some analysis of the genocide of Palestinians throughout the decades and the difficult journey of understanding her own history.
Mainly giving four stars because the importance of the topic. I will say I found the sections about her romantic partner C very mawkish/overly sentimental – he seemed like a super idealized person and there were a lot of cliches in her writing about him. She also mentions her queerness toward the end of the book though it’s not really explored with much depth. So, four stars for the meaning even if there were elements of this memoir that didn’t work for me.
Mainly giving four stars because the importance of the topic. I will say I found the sections about her romantic partner C very mawkish/overly sentimental – he seemed like a super idealized person and there were a lot of cliches in her writing about him. She also mentions her queerness toward the end of the book though it’s not really explored with much depth. So, four stars for the meaning even if there were elements of this memoir that didn’t work for me.
December 27, 2024
beautifully written, excellently researched, and above all, visceral. aziza writes with an ease and vulnerability that carries you through her story. i really enjoyed her commentary on the construction of race in america, and appreciate her exploration of the spliced self. a must read memoir for all. magnificent! 🍉
October 23, 2025
I mostly really really liked this book. The writing is so good. The braiding of the story together is well done. There were a few strands I didn't quite follow, and the pacing was inconsistent, but overall I was really impressed with this book.
June 10, 2025
In Aziza’s memoir, The Hollow Half, the Palestinian American writer and translator brings together two areas in her life marked by an incomplete void. First, Aziza shares her struggle with anorexia nervosa since childhood, possibly provoked by her mother’s comments on food and body image. Aziza’s relationship with food continues into her adulthood, which leads to a stint in an inpatient rehabilitation center. After introducing her eating disorder, the author explicates, “One way to tell the story of a life: list the order and number of ways you learned you were unsafe. For me, girl came first, then Palestinian. Woman and queer were tangled together: one overdetermined; the other gagged. Each one of these words, a border. A frontier that told me: lose yourself or disappear.” As such, Aziza then focuses on Palestine’s regional history, the occupation, and the blockade as experienced by her family. She tells her grandmother’s story, which is mingled with guilt because she recalls feeling embarrassed as a child with an immigrant grandmother in a predominantly white town in America. Furthermore, Aziza threads information about international law, ethnic cleansing by Zionists, and colonialism as it appropriately falls into the timeline of her grandmother’s life.
Aziza’s timely memoir helps readers more tangibly grasp the Palestinian fight for belonging and justice. I understand why the author would pair her story about food and her body with her grandmother, grandmother’s journey as a refugee, and the larger fight to establish an independent Palestinian state—her eating disorder is a large part of her life, as is her Palestinian heritage. So, it’s not that I didn’t appreciate this part of the memoiring, but I wondered whether or not the two ideas consistently complemented each other. For this reason, I rate The Hollow Half 3.5 stars. Still, Aziza writes movingly with lush sentences and honors her family and people well.
My thanks to Catapult and NetGalley for an ARC.
Aziza’s timely memoir helps readers more tangibly grasp the Palestinian fight for belonging and justice. I understand why the author would pair her story about food and her body with her grandmother, grandmother’s journey as a refugee, and the larger fight to establish an independent Palestinian state—her eating disorder is a large part of her life, as is her Palestinian heritage. So, it’s not that I didn’t appreciate this part of the memoiring, but I wondered whether or not the two ideas consistently complemented each other. For this reason, I rate The Hollow Half 3.5 stars. Still, Aziza writes movingly with lush sentences and honors her family and people well.
My thanks to Catapult and NetGalley for an ARC.
December 13, 2025
I’m upgrading to 4 after Jewish Currents podcast interview, https://jewishcurrents.org/writing-th...
I cried when Sarah said “what would have stopped me from losing my way, getting sick …. Would have been if I had been taught to look to Gaza as my North Star.”
Also recommend her interview on the Lit Hub podcast.
https://lithub.com/sarah-aziza-on-try...
Both really deepened my appreciation for this story of body and borders
—-September 2025
I never thought a book could have too many references, but there are way too many quotations opening the Diwan chapter. All 97 quotations, at least 2 from James Baldwin, and 3 from Sarah Ahmed, are beautiful, but it’s too much to hold, so the sum is less than the parts.
Sarah Aziza’s suffering—individual, inter-generational, and communal; physical as well as psychological, are so profound that it’s painful to criticize this book, because I feel like I’m hurting her, too. But there were times because of all the rich references, that I just thought, I’d rather be reading Said, Ahmed, Erakat, or Khalidi etc directly than Aziza’s excerpts from them.
When I think of the entire work as Kiese Laymon describes, of Aziza’s inter- and intra- genre explorations of “finding free” then I can glimpse the book as the sum of its parts, not more, but at least not less.
I have ambivalence about the anorexia narrative because of so many romanticized details, lowest weight, calorie counts, C carrying her up 3 flights of stairs. Adding anything about Sarah’s author photos feels like a trap because of her own hyper-vigilance about her appearance. Ultimately, I have so much empathy for her, and really hope she can carve out some peace for herself during these awful times.
I cried when Sarah said “what would have stopped me from losing my way, getting sick …. Would have been if I had been taught to look to Gaza as my North Star.”
Also recommend her interview on the Lit Hub podcast.
https://lithub.com/sarah-aziza-on-try...
Both really deepened my appreciation for this story of body and borders
—-September 2025
I never thought a book could have too many references, but there are way too many quotations opening the Diwan chapter. All 97 quotations, at least 2 from James Baldwin, and 3 from Sarah Ahmed, are beautiful, but it’s too much to hold, so the sum is less than the parts.
Sarah Aziza’s suffering—individual, inter-generational, and communal; physical as well as psychological, are so profound that it’s painful to criticize this book, because I feel like I’m hurting her, too. But there were times because of all the rich references, that I just thought, I’d rather be reading Said, Ahmed, Erakat, or Khalidi etc directly than Aziza’s excerpts from them.
When I think of the entire work as Kiese Laymon describes, of Aziza’s inter- and intra- genre explorations of “finding free” then I can glimpse the book as the sum of its parts, not more, but at least not less.
I have ambivalence about the anorexia narrative because of so many romanticized details, lowest weight, calorie counts, C carrying her up 3 flights of stairs. Adding anything about Sarah’s author photos feels like a trap because of her own hyper-vigilance about her appearance. Ultimately, I have so much empathy for her, and really hope she can carve out some peace for herself during these awful times.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 5, 2025
While everything about Sarah Aziza’s The Hollow Half is stunning, I find myself in a rare position, I’m lost for words on how to describe it. Raw, emotive, powerful and heart breaking. A heart wrenching account of living with disordered eating, and a stunning love letter to Palestine, I was moved to tears more times than I could count. The latter chapters were a bit confusing, but I imagine they relate better in text. More an index of quotes and extracts, which are completely fitting they just confused me.
Narrated as beautifully as it’s written.
It’s funny that the books I rate the highest take all the words right out of mind.
All the stars 🌟
#Jorecommends
Huge thanks to Dreamscape Media via NetGalley for the opportunity to review this ALC 🎧
Narrated as beautifully as it’s written.
It’s funny that the books I rate the highest take all the words right out of mind.
All the stars 🌟
#Jorecommends
Huge thanks to Dreamscape Media via NetGalley for the opportunity to review this ALC 🎧
April 19, 2025
ARC gifted by the publisher
What I loved
- the exquisite writing gives a lyrical and hypnotic feel to the memoir that I really appreciate
- how “translation” is incorporated in the book is refreshing. While not a translated text, the author really drives home the point of the unknowability of Palestine history and experience because of all that’s lost — in land, people, language, and so much more
- the discussions of how dispossession — externally because of her family being expelled from Palestine, internally having to fracture herself into “white American” vs “Arab American” — is connected to her eating disorder is visceral and intimate
What didn’t work for me
- the fragmented structure made it disorienting for me to follow, and I feel it’s hard to follow Azusa’s train of thought throughout the memoir. At times, it reads more like poetry / short paragraphs rather than fully developed chapters
- i feel the book has a bit of an identity crisis. the memoir part is a bit too scattered and failed to go deep enough to connect things in the author’s past (I feel like there’s a checklist of things the author wanted to talk about and in doing so, a lot of aspects are glossed over)
- i personally would’ve liked that Aziza just focused on fewer topics, really go deep into them, and try to more clearly connect bodies vs borders. On the other hand, I feel the history of Palestine in the texts reads a bit out of place and could’ve done without those
What I loved
- the exquisite writing gives a lyrical and hypnotic feel to the memoir that I really appreciate
- how “translation” is incorporated in the book is refreshing. While not a translated text, the author really drives home the point of the unknowability of Palestine history and experience because of all that’s lost — in land, people, language, and so much more
- the discussions of how dispossession — externally because of her family being expelled from Palestine, internally having to fracture herself into “white American” vs “Arab American” — is connected to her eating disorder is visceral and intimate
What didn’t work for me
- the fragmented structure made it disorienting for me to follow, and I feel it’s hard to follow Azusa’s train of thought throughout the memoir. At times, it reads more like poetry / short paragraphs rather than fully developed chapters
- i feel the book has a bit of an identity crisis. the memoir part is a bit too scattered and failed to go deep enough to connect things in the author’s past (I feel like there’s a checklist of things the author wanted to talk about and in doing so, a lot of aspects are glossed over)
- i personally would’ve liked that Aziza just focused on fewer topics, really go deep into them, and try to more clearly connect bodies vs borders. On the other hand, I feel the history of Palestine in the texts reads a bit out of place and could’ve done without those
June 14, 2025
The first half was so good. The narrative steadily meandered after she came back from treatment. There are too many jumps in the timeline.
For example. After a segment about her father or grandmother in Palestine, she'll be talking about her own time in college, and then all of a sudden she's talking about her time with C in her apartment. I listened to the audiobook so I found this particularly irritating. I skipped a lot of the overly flowery descriptions of her dream segments during the last 2 hours of the book. Like, why are you hitting me over the head with this again, we've gone through this. I have to say I got tired of the million metaphors to describe things already described, often in the same paragraph.
This is a really important memoir, because people don't realize the feeling of one's homeland being actively razed during their own time, and the complicated ways this trauma manifests in one's life. In my opinion it could benefit from an editor with a firm hand.
For example. After a segment about her father or grandmother in Palestine, she'll be talking about her own time in college, and then all of a sudden she's talking about her time with C in her apartment. I listened to the audiobook so I found this particularly irritating. I skipped a lot of the overly flowery descriptions of her dream segments during the last 2 hours of the book. Like, why are you hitting me over the head with this again, we've gone through this. I have to say I got tired of the million metaphors to describe things already described, often in the same paragraph.
This is a really important memoir, because people don't realize the feeling of one's homeland being actively razed during their own time, and the complicated ways this trauma manifests in one's life. In my opinion it could benefit from an editor with a firm hand.
April 18, 2025
Dedication: For love & for Gaza, words fail.
Words fail to convey the depths of my love for this book (much like its dedication).
This incomparable memoir bends genre, geographies, and timelines.
It is as lyrical as it is luminous.
It’s breathtaking while being life giving.
It is searing even as it is healing.
It disrupts as it recollects.
The truth telling, artistry and distinctive innovations of this gifted author make this an immensely memorable and potentially life altering read.
*immensely grateful to the publisher for early access to this book
Words fail to convey the depths of my love for this book (much like its dedication).
This incomparable memoir bends genre, geographies, and timelines.
It is as lyrical as it is luminous.
It’s breathtaking while being life giving.
It is searing even as it is healing.
It disrupts as it recollects.
The truth telling, artistry and distinctive innovations of this gifted author make this an immensely memorable and potentially life altering read.
*immensely grateful to the publisher for early access to this book
November 12, 2025
The Hollow Half is a memoir of the journalist Sarah Aziza. Someone of half Palestinian ancestry who was also hospitalized for an eating disorder. This book covers both of these aspects of her life, in a surprisingly well conveyed manner that offers a memoir unlike any other I’ve read.
At first, the combination of these two concepts may seem unrelated but there really is a closer tie between the two. Many cultures have a great focus on food but for Palestinians food offers something even greater. While so many other aspects of Palestinian history, identity, and culture have been erased or contested, food stands as an irrefutable aspect of a people fighting to be acknowledged. Food is a way to showcase culture that crosses language barriers, it brings people together, and it offers comfort in remembering family traditions and relatives who may no longer be with us.
Sarah Aziza has a very different relationship with food, one that is explored in this book and slowly revealed to the reader. Her anorexia takes hold in such a way that it brings her to near death. This moment of hospitalization is detailed very early on in the book but this moment is led up to by years of experiences that build to this extreme outcome.
Throughout the book Aziza grapples with her understanding of what it means to be Palestinian for her, someone who is “only half”. She questions how involved she can be and how much she can claim. There are times where she is younger and rejects this culture, similar to how she rejects food. A denial of both of these aspects that ultimately only nourish and benefit her.
The narrative of this memoir is nonlinear. As a fan of literary fiction I’m familiar with books structured this way but I’m not sure I’ve read a memoir that utilizes this form. There are a few narratives we follow throughout this book, Aziza growing up, detailing pivotal moments in her upbringing that influenced her relationship with food as well as her place in proximity to whiteness, the narrative of her grandmother and father and how they went from Mandate Palestine to suburban Chicago, her time in the Middle East building a personal relationship with Arab culture and Israeli occupation first hand, her time being hospitalized and later discharged in a covid imminent world, her time during the pandemic with her partner where she is still trying to recover from the worst of her health experiences while simultaneously handling new challenges.
All of these narratives alternate, jumping between time periods and subject matter. Typically this would be an issue for comprehension and focus of a book this vast but I think Aziza does a great job capturing these subjects while offering proper weight to each detail.
There are no traditional chapters in this book but rather section breaks that come every few pages. This allows the reading experience to flow continuously in a quite fluid manner. Keeping the reader engaged, it offers chances to pick up and put down the book without too much issue.
The hardest aspect of reading this book is the subject matter. Both main focuses of this book aren’t typically seen as “enjoyable” things to read about but there is some reassurance in reflection, resonating with similar experiences.
As someone who is also of partial Palestinian ancestry the discussions on ethnicity, whiteness, and belonging felt deeply relatable. While many aspects of our lives are very different, some experiences felt eerily similar to my own, something I haven’t seen detailed anywhere.
This was a big reason I picked up this book and I’m glad I did so. I really felt fulfilled in what I expected from this book while also having my expectations exceeded after actually reading it. As stated before, the structure of this memoir is one that offered a unique reading experience that elevated the topic beyond a typical “ethnic memoir”. I would compare the structure of this book to that of Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams. While a work of fiction, the coverage of history around a specific ethnic group and commentary on white supremacy, through this kind of structural reveal, felt similar in execution.
While nowhere near as extreme as Aziza’s experiences, I have my own experiences with the medical system around digestive health, having been diagnosed with Crohn’s. My relationship with food is very different from that of Aziza but I do know that many issues have a huge mental component. It can be very hard to vocalize what you are experiencing or relating with others, something that I think Aziza accomplishes quite well here.
Aziza’s writing certainly is a step above the typical contemporary memoir. The anecdotes she shares will have you empathizing with her, her family, and her partner, feeling their pain in a very personal way. While often short, these stories offer great detail, placing you in those moments with clarity in what she wishes to highlight. Given how much the narrative shifts around this is an even greater accomplishment.
So many moments of this book felt eerily similar to my own. Her experiences of learning her place in white supremacist American society and how arbitrary that can be for an Arab American. Her experiences in college becoming comfortable speaking and advocating for Palestine and questioning her role in doing so. Her reflections on how her health has changed her and affected her relationships with those she loves. All of these are major points that I’ve never seen highlighted like this before.
Beyond my own personal relationship with the subject matter I think this really is one of the best memoirs I’ve read. The unique structure and quality of writing should impress any reader and I wish this was getting the kind of praise of other Palestine referencing memoirs released this year.
At first, the combination of these two concepts may seem unrelated but there really is a closer tie between the two. Many cultures have a great focus on food but for Palestinians food offers something even greater. While so many other aspects of Palestinian history, identity, and culture have been erased or contested, food stands as an irrefutable aspect of a people fighting to be acknowledged. Food is a way to showcase culture that crosses language barriers, it brings people together, and it offers comfort in remembering family traditions and relatives who may no longer be with us.
Sarah Aziza has a very different relationship with food, one that is explored in this book and slowly revealed to the reader. Her anorexia takes hold in such a way that it brings her to near death. This moment of hospitalization is detailed very early on in the book but this moment is led up to by years of experiences that build to this extreme outcome.
Throughout the book Aziza grapples with her understanding of what it means to be Palestinian for her, someone who is “only half”. She questions how involved she can be and how much she can claim. There are times where she is younger and rejects this culture, similar to how she rejects food. A denial of both of these aspects that ultimately only nourish and benefit her.
The narrative of this memoir is nonlinear. As a fan of literary fiction I’m familiar with books structured this way but I’m not sure I’ve read a memoir that utilizes this form. There are a few narratives we follow throughout this book, Aziza growing up, detailing pivotal moments in her upbringing that influenced her relationship with food as well as her place in proximity to whiteness, the narrative of her grandmother and father and how they went from Mandate Palestine to suburban Chicago, her time in the Middle East building a personal relationship with Arab culture and Israeli occupation first hand, her time being hospitalized and later discharged in a covid imminent world, her time during the pandemic with her partner where she is still trying to recover from the worst of her health experiences while simultaneously handling new challenges.
All of these narratives alternate, jumping between time periods and subject matter. Typically this would be an issue for comprehension and focus of a book this vast but I think Aziza does a great job capturing these subjects while offering proper weight to each detail.
There are no traditional chapters in this book but rather section breaks that come every few pages. This allows the reading experience to flow continuously in a quite fluid manner. Keeping the reader engaged, it offers chances to pick up and put down the book without too much issue.
The hardest aspect of reading this book is the subject matter. Both main focuses of this book aren’t typically seen as “enjoyable” things to read about but there is some reassurance in reflection, resonating with similar experiences.
As someone who is also of partial Palestinian ancestry the discussions on ethnicity, whiteness, and belonging felt deeply relatable. While many aspects of our lives are very different, some experiences felt eerily similar to my own, something I haven’t seen detailed anywhere.
This was a big reason I picked up this book and I’m glad I did so. I really felt fulfilled in what I expected from this book while also having my expectations exceeded after actually reading it. As stated before, the structure of this memoir is one that offered a unique reading experience that elevated the topic beyond a typical “ethnic memoir”. I would compare the structure of this book to that of Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams. While a work of fiction, the coverage of history around a specific ethnic group and commentary on white supremacy, through this kind of structural reveal, felt similar in execution.
While nowhere near as extreme as Aziza’s experiences, I have my own experiences with the medical system around digestive health, having been diagnosed with Crohn’s. My relationship with food is very different from that of Aziza but I do know that many issues have a huge mental component. It can be very hard to vocalize what you are experiencing or relating with others, something that I think Aziza accomplishes quite well here.
Aziza’s writing certainly is a step above the typical contemporary memoir. The anecdotes she shares will have you empathizing with her, her family, and her partner, feeling their pain in a very personal way. While often short, these stories offer great detail, placing you in those moments with clarity in what she wishes to highlight. Given how much the narrative shifts around this is an even greater accomplishment.
So many moments of this book felt eerily similar to my own. Her experiences of learning her place in white supremacist American society and how arbitrary that can be for an Arab American. Her experiences in college becoming comfortable speaking and advocating for Palestine and questioning her role in doing so. Her reflections on how her health has changed her and affected her relationships with those she loves. All of these are major points that I’ve never seen highlighted like this before.
Beyond my own personal relationship with the subject matter I think this really is one of the best memoirs I’ve read. The unique structure and quality of writing should impress any reader and I wish this was getting the kind of praise of other Palestine referencing memoirs released this year.
June 3, 2025
I just love the author and I love her writing, but somewhere in the second half of the book she lost her sharp point of view. Her writing began to shape shifting every few pages and the thesis and story of it all just got lost
April 22, 2025
Today, THE HOLLOW HALF (gifted by Catapult) finds its way, fully, into the world ♥️
After years of being hollowed out by illness, Aziza is hospitalized for anorexia. Meals are exactly portioned and forced down, violations are punished, communication with the outside world is limited. Illness is wiped clean of its history. Yet, history still finds her: for a moment within the hospital cafeteria, an apricot yogurt becomes a portal, a rupture, bringing along with it the realization that doctors here could not heal her. Generations of trauma and loss have made her a “fugitive from [her] own flesh,” a displacement that echoes the histories of Palestinian displacement that haunts her family. The seduction of starvation, inextricable from what has already been hollowed out inside. But just beyond displacement lies the “instinct to return.” And boldly, bravely, she does.
THE HOLLOW HALF is a return to the past, to dreaming of ghosts, to memories of when hunger was delicious, when the fullness of bodies was a cloak of safety. It is a tearing-apart of the seduction of white America, a shedding of disguise and the “beautiful life” of the American dream. It is a refutation to all the ways America promised to keep us safe. It is a return to the Palestine and Gaza that have always haunted her as shattered images on television, as vague entities that she watched fall from her father’s mouth as prayers, as photographs that always “left [her]…swimming in something [she] couldn’t name.” It is all of this, finally made physical: the texture of real, living land, alive and vibrant even as genocide seeks to destroy it—a testament to survival.
After years of being hollowed out by illness, Aziza is hospitalized for anorexia. Meals are exactly portioned and forced down, violations are punished, communication with the outside world is limited. Illness is wiped clean of its history. Yet, history still finds her: for a moment within the hospital cafeteria, an apricot yogurt becomes a portal, a rupture, bringing along with it the realization that doctors here could not heal her. Generations of trauma and loss have made her a “fugitive from [her] own flesh,” a displacement that echoes the histories of Palestinian displacement that haunts her family. The seduction of starvation, inextricable from what has already been hollowed out inside. But just beyond displacement lies the “instinct to return.” And boldly, bravely, she does.
THE HOLLOW HALF is a return to the past, to dreaming of ghosts, to memories of when hunger was delicious, when the fullness of bodies was a cloak of safety. It is a tearing-apart of the seduction of white America, a shedding of disguise and the “beautiful life” of the American dream. It is a refutation to all the ways America promised to keep us safe. It is a return to the Palestine and Gaza that have always haunted her as shattered images on television, as vague entities that she watched fall from her father’s mouth as prayers, as photographs that always “left [her]…swimming in something [she] couldn’t name.” It is all of this, finally made physical: the texture of real, living land, alive and vibrant even as genocide seeks to destroy it—a testament to survival.
Read
September 30, 2025Vulnerable, dream-like and lyrical, and a ghostly reckoning with personal and generational trauma.
The Hollow Half was a very unique memoir, and its swirling poetry captivated me. Sarah shares her journey with her eating disorder (before and during COVID-19), her understanding of Palestinian identity, and her relationship to her homeland and displacement.
The most powerful touchpoint to me was the author’s relationship with her grandmother (Sittoo). This was the heart of her story, and the portrait she painted of her was tender and engaging.
I occasionally leaned away when things felt a little less sincere and she pulled back from that rawness, mostly around her relationship with her partner. The segments around queerness also felt like sort of a last-minute addition and weren’t explored in-depth enough for me.
CW: eating disorder, genocide, racism, murder, colonization, rape, medical content, self harm, grief, dysphoria, chronic illness, grief, islamophobia, police brutality, cancer, fatphobia, ableism
Follow me on social media for book recommendations!
The Hollow Half was a very unique memoir, and its swirling poetry captivated me. Sarah shares her journey with her eating disorder (before and during COVID-19), her understanding of Palestinian identity, and her relationship to her homeland and displacement.
The most powerful touchpoint to me was the author’s relationship with her grandmother (Sittoo). This was the heart of her story, and the portrait she painted of her was tender and engaging.
I occasionally leaned away when things felt a little less sincere and she pulled back from that rawness, mostly around her relationship with her partner. The segments around queerness also felt like sort of a last-minute addition and weren’t explored in-depth enough for me.
CW: eating disorder, genocide, racism, murder, colonization, rape, medical content, self harm, grief, dysphoria, chronic illness, grief, islamophobia, police brutality, cancer, fatphobia, ableism
Follow me on social media for book recommendations!
August 31, 2025
4.5 stars
August 23, 2025
What if inter-generational trauma and the Othering and racism that the US is built on shaped your life... and also you had an eating disorder?
Aziza brings many strands together in her memoir: historical analysis and critical theory, vignettes about the Arabic language, her family history, her own life events, her battle with an eating disorder and how it impacted her marriage (I found that part most touching), her queerness... She is clearly a deep thinker and an imaginative writer. I enjoyed each separate strand, but it was often unclear to me why specific events/topics were assembled into each chapter. I consider myself an attentive and perceptive reader, but for most of the book Aziza's eating disorder and her complex experiences and feelings about Palestine were separate, with episodes shuffled together like a deck of cards. But the couple of instances where these strands did intersect felt very insightful and impactful.
Aziza's poetry-like prose is a defining feature of this book, and while most of the book balances "substance" and "form" quite well, the last part bordered on incomprehensible for me.
All of which is to say, there is clearly a lot of potential here, but the book felt under edited.
Aziza brings many strands together in her memoir: historical analysis and critical theory, vignettes about the Arabic language, her family history, her own life events, her battle with an eating disorder and how it impacted her marriage (I found that part most touching), her queerness... She is clearly a deep thinker and an imaginative writer. I enjoyed each separate strand, but it was often unclear to me why specific events/topics were assembled into each chapter. I consider myself an attentive and perceptive reader, but for most of the book Aziza's eating disorder and her complex experiences and feelings about Palestine were separate, with episodes shuffled together like a deck of cards. But the couple of instances where these strands did intersect felt very insightful and impactful.
Aziza's poetry-like prose is a defining feature of this book, and while most of the book balances "substance" and "form" quite well, the last part bordered on incomprehensible for me.
All of which is to say, there is clearly a lot of potential here, but the book felt under edited.
October 4, 2025
Closer to 3.5 stars. The writing in this book was absolutely fantastic. Her ability to create beautiful phrases with small tweaks of words is some of the best writing. I love learning about the history of a place through a person’s story, and loved the way she wove in the history of Palestine and the impact to her family. The book was heavy to read at points, given the prevalence of her disordered eating and generational trauma. I felt like the end was incomplete—the book was so reflective and then felt rushed at the end. Perhaps a symbol of of an ongoing story, but it felt unfinished. She also mentioned her queerness at points but the storyline felt totally unexplored—just dropped in but left hidden (perhaps intentionally, but then felt bizarre to note it).
June 19, 2025
a beautiful memoir that just breaks your heart but renews your hope for better. free free palestine🇵🇸🩷
April 25, 2025
absolutely stunning (and i don’t even like memoirs…) writing was so gorgeous and delicate and honest, alternatively restrained and explicit in all the right places. thrummed with a sense of kindness and determination i haven’t really felt before. it was like sarah aziza was taking me by the hand and walking me through her own story. even when it became painful and even hard to read, i felt at home in the pages….
so much to love about this book but it’s kind of something you have to read for yourself. footnotes/endnotes were immaculate, non-chronology was done so carefully i never felt out of place or time, was somehow novel, poetry, theory, and manifesto all at once, each part indispensable to the whole ?!?
only thing to mention is it very explicitly discusses her experience of anorexia, including numbers, explicit bodily descriptions of weight loss and gain, and tactics used… done with a lot of sensitivity and care so didn’t grate on me like that sometimes does but not something i’d recommend reading if that’s more intimately painful for you (!). same goes for depictions of a variety of different forms of violence, both personal and systemic, though those are much less explicitly and intimately discussed.
mostly just like wow just read it. so so amazing made me cry, weaves the personal and political together incredibly well, cohesive, coherent, radicalizing and devastating but somehow also so gentle wow. really had a great time with this one. wasnt necessarily perfect bus was so solidly and firmly good. gets a 5 for all that + especially loved what she did with form, so creative and exciting.
what a labor of love and a reminder of the work of it. what a labor of love for gaza as well, and a reminder of that love in every page. feels so special to read this the week of its release <33
so much to love about this book but it’s kind of something you have to read for yourself. footnotes/endnotes were immaculate, non-chronology was done so carefully i never felt out of place or time, was somehow novel, poetry, theory, and manifesto all at once, each part indispensable to the whole ?!?
only thing to mention is it very explicitly discusses her experience of anorexia, including numbers, explicit bodily descriptions of weight loss and gain, and tactics used… done with a lot of sensitivity and care so didn’t grate on me like that sometimes does but not something i’d recommend reading if that’s more intimately painful for you (!). same goes for depictions of a variety of different forms of violence, both personal and systemic, though those are much less explicitly and intimately discussed.
mostly just like wow just read it. so so amazing made me cry, weaves the personal and political together incredibly well, cohesive, coherent, radicalizing and devastating but somehow also so gentle wow. really had a great time with this one. wasnt necessarily perfect bus was so solidly and firmly good. gets a 5 for all that + especially loved what she did with form, so creative and exciting.
what a labor of love and a reminder of the work of it. what a labor of love for gaza as well, and a reminder of that love in every page. feels so special to read this the week of its release <33
April 14, 2025
[ 4.5/5 stars ]
THE HOLLOW HALF is the memoir of Sarah Aziza, a daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees who deals with anorexia.
As the book starts with Aziza trying to survive anorexia, Aziza delves deep in this complex eating disorder, which cruelty and inter-dependence with mental health turn emptiness into a state of being. Chapters of her recovery's journey alternate with her family's history/secrets, which vulnerability and fragility are conveyed through an exquisite prose and flood one's mind.
Lost from history and estranged from the homeland, Aziza is double weighted - figurately and literally - a hollow in the heart and stomach nurtured by a trauma that also sustains her. An aura of private griefs lingers in the words and in dissecting the root of Arabic language, one is invited to experience loneliness, loss and rage of generations riven by the occupation. There's a phantom of displacement and erasure creeping inside signs of hope and happiness, which cathartic release and our own convenience almost feel like a betrayal.
The history of Palestinian refugees is embedded in the author's personal emotions, and I think this is a motivation for readers to seek more about the reality of Palestine. If I have one issue is that the transitions can feel a bit disjointed.
THE HOLLOW HALF is a haunting, unfiltered and visceral memoir about body and land. I consider this a must-read.
[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher - Catapult . All opinions are my own ]
THE HOLLOW HALF is the memoir of Sarah Aziza, a daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees who deals with anorexia.
As the book starts with Aziza trying to survive anorexia, Aziza delves deep in this complex eating disorder, which cruelty and inter-dependence with mental health turn emptiness into a state of being. Chapters of her recovery's journey alternate with her family's history/secrets, which vulnerability and fragility are conveyed through an exquisite prose and flood one's mind.
Lost from history and estranged from the homeland, Aziza is double weighted - figurately and literally - a hollow in the heart and stomach nurtured by a trauma that also sustains her. An aura of private griefs lingers in the words and in dissecting the root of Arabic language, one is invited to experience loneliness, loss and rage of generations riven by the occupation. There's a phantom of displacement and erasure creeping inside signs of hope and happiness, which cathartic release and our own convenience almost feel like a betrayal.
The history of Palestinian refugees is embedded in the author's personal emotions, and I think this is a motivation for readers to seek more about the reality of Palestine. If I have one issue is that the transitions can feel a bit disjointed.
THE HOLLOW HALF is a haunting, unfiltered and visceral memoir about body and land. I consider this a must-read.
[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher - Catapult . All opinions are my own ]
dnf
October 6, 2025DNF p. 266
This is a gorgeous memoir by a Palestinian American woman exploring the relationship between disordered eating and Palestinian displacement. It’s beautifully written with interesting structural choices (including Arabic lesson interludes) but the content is understandably tough. While I only have 100 pages left, it's best for me to set it aside for now. Perhaps someday I'll come back to those final pages.
Note: I would not recommend this to anyone currently struggling with disordered eating or body image issues. The author goes into great detail about her experience with anorexia and orthorexia and this was written very close to when she received treatment.
Content notes: past rape, anorexia, orthorexia, panic attack, past suicidal ideation (grandmother), body dysmorphia, psychiatric hospitalization, past workplace sexual harassment, weight gain and loss, skipping meals, fatphobia, police violence, grandmother survived Nakba and Gaza refugee camp, Palestinian father is twice-refugee, past forced family separation and forcible displacement (during Nakba), assimilation, past broken pelvis and elbow (bike accident), bone marrow biopsy, back pain, COVID, asthma (father), parasites (relative), anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination, racism, Islamaphobia, colonialism, Zionism, sexism, disabled grandmother (in wheelchair), ableism, internalized biphobia, illiteracy (grandmother), family separation (father stayed in Saudi Arabia while mother and kids went back to US), past parental divorce, grandfather was a serial cheater who left grandmother for another woman, past death of relatives (cancer, measles), past death of grandmother's cat, vague on page sex, alcohol, psilocybin, pain medication, ableist language, hyperbolic language around inebriation
This is a gorgeous memoir by a Palestinian American woman exploring the relationship between disordered eating and Palestinian displacement. It’s beautifully written with interesting structural choices (including Arabic lesson interludes) but the content is understandably tough. While I only have 100 pages left, it's best for me to set it aside for now. Perhaps someday I'll come back to those final pages.
Note: I would not recommend this to anyone currently struggling with disordered eating or body image issues. The author goes into great detail about her experience with anorexia and orthorexia and this was written very close to when she received treatment.
Content notes: past rape, anorexia, orthorexia, panic attack, past suicidal ideation (grandmother), body dysmorphia, psychiatric hospitalization, past workplace sexual harassment, weight gain and loss, skipping meals, fatphobia, police violence, grandmother survived Nakba and Gaza refugee camp, Palestinian father is twice-refugee, past forced family separation and forcible displacement (during Nakba), assimilation, past broken pelvis and elbow (bike accident), bone marrow biopsy, back pain, COVID, asthma (father), parasites (relative), anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination, racism, Islamaphobia, colonialism, Zionism, sexism, disabled grandmother (in wheelchair), ableism, internalized biphobia, illiteracy (grandmother), family separation (father stayed in Saudi Arabia while mother and kids went back to US), past parental divorce, grandfather was a serial cheater who left grandmother for another woman, past death of relatives (cancer, measles), past death of grandmother's cat, vague on page sex, alcohol, psilocybin, pain medication, ableist language, hyperbolic language around inebriation
October 20, 2025
Personal and political, haunting, defiant, pulsating with love.
April 27, 2025
Weaving the troubles of an eating disorder, being a daughter of Gaza refugees, and the alarming colorism and racism that was showed during the COVID-19 pandemic; Sarah tells her life story beautifully amongst the pain.
May 6, 2025
I was expecting another 30-something trying desperately how artistic they are through the abuse of prose while struggling with a quarter-life crisis. That is not what I got and this one shocked me in a number of ways.
- This was a raw exploration of identity that could not have been more foreign to me (myself a white cis hetero man). Regardless, it drew me out of myself in the way only a good book could. As she describes her journey, the way she has skillfully knit a narrative driven on intimate, voyeuristic moments that draws you along in a way you can't help but feel.
- The stunningly beautiful prose (and I'm typically not into prose) literally stopped in my in tracks multiples times. Am I old enough to like poetry now?
Extremely well crafted. And a huge THANK YOU to Sarah for having the bravery to bear herself like this so the world can hear a story. A story of struggling with body and identity and how that is inextricable from the racial trauma she and her family face.
Hoping to hear more from her.
- This was a raw exploration of identity that could not have been more foreign to me (myself a white cis hetero man). Regardless, it drew me out of myself in the way only a good book could. As she describes her journey, the way she has skillfully knit a narrative driven on intimate, voyeuristic moments that draws you along in a way you can't help but feel.
- The stunningly beautiful prose (and I'm typically not into prose) literally stopped in my in tracks multiples times. Am I old enough to like poetry now?
Extremely well crafted. And a huge THANK YOU to Sarah for having the bravery to bear herself like this so the world can hear a story. A story of struggling with body and identity and how that is inextricable from the racial trauma she and her family face.
Hoping to hear more from her.
April 21, 2025
Informed, heartfelt eloquent writer. Sarah will take every reader to places of heart and integrity, where history and the lived life rages together in passion, grief and deep yearning for justice.
July 2, 2025
I have many many many thoughts on this one. I'll just drop a few major ones
1. I feel like Sarah and I would lowkey be buddies so I'll be nice!
2. I appreciate the focus on language and how it shapes perspectives of resilience.
3. The writing was nice! But it was also a little exhausting and repetitive towards the end.
4. LOVED LOVED LOVED the footnotes! I am now mad at every other book for not having the same dedication to accuracy, historical context, and supporting literature.
5. Her interview on Democracy Now ties the topics together better but it wasn't done too well in the book.
6. All in all, this reads a little more like a love letter to C...
1. I feel like Sarah and I would lowkey be buddies so I'll be nice!
2. I appreciate the focus on language and how it shapes perspectives of resilience.
3. The writing was nice! But it was also a little exhausting and repetitive towards the end.
4. LOVED LOVED LOVED the footnotes! I am now mad at every other book for not having the same dedication to accuracy, historical context, and supporting literature.
5. Her interview on Democracy Now ties the topics together better but it wasn't done too well in the book.
6. All in all, this reads a little more like a love letter to C...
July 22, 2025
This book was very disjointed and I couldn’t tell how all of her experiences connected in the book. It became very frustrating to read towards the back end. The stories she told would’ve been much better if they all connected and were not all over the place on setting and timeline. While this is a memoir and I don’t want to discredit the authors experiences, she didn’t convey her message to me as she intended. I was severely disappointed in this book.
December 24, 2025
.. rarely an object of art can both choke you and nourish and validate you all at once. This book will remain a life in this life until self's words come together, as i suspected when i had to pick up the book the instant i saw its first physical manifestation and devoured half of it in a few days, and then some.
August 23, 2025
I'm a sucker for a well-executed personal essay, and the middle of this book is a wonderful excavation of the author's eating disorder and Palestinian identity. Aziza writes gorgeous prose. I really did enjoy listening to the middle 50%.
However, I was not a fan of the first chapter of the book, which delves into her hospitalization and residential treatment. It very much comes across as 1. romanticizing her eating disorder (we should not be glamorizing deadly diseases??) and 2. subtly bragging about how she was the sickest, skinniest, most frail, best anorexic her clinic had ever seen (why is the author mentally competing against other anorexics, and low key putting down other patients who never lost as much weight, broke as many bones, etc. as she did?? that is so fucked up??). I think this is an incredibly delicate topic that needs to be written about with extreme sensitivity and thoughtfulness. I don't think mentioning her lowest weights in a humble-bragging way, poeticizing starvation, or detailing the fervor and methods of her immediate relapse is a good way to achieve this.
The book also goes off the rails a bit at the end- it seems to lose focus and jumps around in a bit of a haphazard and directionless manner. This is true of the end of the personal essay, and the entire section of quotations that follows (don't get me wrong, I love Sara Ahmed and Frantz Fanon quotes, probably way more than the average person, but this part of the book made me imagine a personal file titled "quotes I love" more than anything else). The writing in these sections is still very pretty though! I see the vision, but it didn't really click with me.
Additionally, the author alludes to struggling with her gender identity, sexuality, and history of sexual assault in connection with her eating disorder, but doesn't explore these topics with much depth. It feels like painting her eating disorder experience through the lens of her Palestinian identity might come at the expense of dropping other important threads of her identity and experience- of course, this isn't for me to judge, but I do wonder.
I'm stuck between giving this 3 or 4 stars. This review contains a lot of critique, but the parts that were good were SO GOOD. Aziza is truly a phenomenal writer. I would give the middle 50% of the memoir a solid 5 stars.
However, I was not a fan of the first chapter of the book, which delves into her hospitalization and residential treatment. It very much comes across as 1. romanticizing her eating disorder (we should not be glamorizing deadly diseases??) and 2. subtly bragging about how she was the sickest, skinniest, most frail, best anorexic her clinic had ever seen (why is the author mentally competing against other anorexics, and low key putting down other patients who never lost as much weight, broke as many bones, etc. as she did?? that is so fucked up??). I think this is an incredibly delicate topic that needs to be written about with extreme sensitivity and thoughtfulness. I don't think mentioning her lowest weights in a humble-bragging way, poeticizing starvation, or detailing the fervor and methods of her immediate relapse is a good way to achieve this.
The book also goes off the rails a bit at the end- it seems to lose focus and jumps around in a bit of a haphazard and directionless manner. This is true of the end of the personal essay, and the entire section of quotations that follows (don't get me wrong, I love Sara Ahmed and Frantz Fanon quotes, probably way more than the average person, but this part of the book made me imagine a personal file titled "quotes I love" more than anything else). The writing in these sections is still very pretty though! I see the vision, but it didn't really click with me.
Additionally, the author alludes to struggling with her gender identity, sexuality, and history of sexual assault in connection with her eating disorder, but doesn't explore these topics with much depth. It feels like painting her eating disorder experience through the lens of her Palestinian identity might come at the expense of dropping other important threads of her identity and experience- of course, this isn't for me to judge, but I do wonder.
I'm stuck between giving this 3 or 4 stars. This review contains a lot of critique, but the parts that were good were SO GOOD. Aziza is truly a phenomenal writer. I would give the middle 50% of the memoir a solid 5 stars.
January 8, 2026
This is an extremely intellectual literary endeavor. It covers immense ground and is often stylistically and thematically experimental. The writing is very poetic and I found myself having to go over passages multiple times before I could discern what they meant. It’s also rigorous like a textbook and the footnotes expand the scope wider and wider as the book goes on. I don’t think I’ve read anything like this before. Other reviewers describe it as hazy, delicate, dream-like. Those are apt. I also thought the author was trying to reckon with a haunting…it read as gothic to me in parts. It does an excellent job of making real the prison of anorexia and of an occupied, later displaced people. When I say it covers so much ground, this is not even a comprehensive list of the themes explored:
- girlhood
- the worth of a woman
- assault
- identity
- generational trauma
- generational displacement
- the sense of belonging
- real self versus a performative self
- the weight of perfectionism borne of immigrant parent’s expectations
- history, occupation and the wrongness of how Israel and so much of the world has treated Palestine and Palestinians
- the interconnectedness of struggle across different peoples & cultures
- diasporas
- family
And on and on.
It’s pretty brilliant but it’s not for the faint of heart. If someone else told me they read this book and proceeded to describe it to me, I would visibly wince and then maintain the completely unpreventable wince all throughout the description. Reading it made me nauseous at times especially when she describes the burgeoning sensations in girlhood of a gaze always on her that she couldn’t please - it reads like a horror story; building herself from “watching and response”. Occupied and trapped. A fitting corollary for the Palestinian plight. And overall a visceral gut punch of a book.
- girlhood
- the worth of a woman
- assault
- identity
- generational trauma
- generational displacement
- the sense of belonging
- real self versus a performative self
- the weight of perfectionism borne of immigrant parent’s expectations
- history, occupation and the wrongness of how Israel and so much of the world has treated Palestine and Palestinians
- the interconnectedness of struggle across different peoples & cultures
- diasporas
- family
And on and on.
It’s pretty brilliant but it’s not for the faint of heart. If someone else told me they read this book and proceeded to describe it to me, I would visibly wince and then maintain the completely unpreventable wince all throughout the description. Reading it made me nauseous at times especially when she describes the burgeoning sensations in girlhood of a gaze always on her that she couldn’t please - it reads like a horror story; building herself from “watching and response”. Occupied and trapped. A fitting corollary for the Palestinian plight. And overall a visceral gut punch of a book.
May 20, 2025
This was so beautifully and poetically written. It felt more like listening to (I read this via the audiobook) someone reciting a really long poem than a memoir.
This was also a very unique way of telling this story and sharing this information that the author wanted to share. This isn't just a story of Palestine and the devastation of its people and of Gaza, this is the author's experience of seeing all of that happen through her own life. Sarah Aziza is half American and half Palestinian, raised in America and as a very white-passing person at that. She explains how she experienced racism and propaganda and watching how people displayed that towards her. Since she's white-passing, others had to come to terms with their own racism because she's "not like the others" and other sentiments like that. (AKA racism.)
But beyond Sarah dealing with racism and propaganda about the years upon years upon years of war on Palestine, Sarah dealt with an eating disorder. You see how she is not just dealing with one difficult thing, but many. And how the two are related.
I think that everyone needs to read this book, if you are pro-Palestine or pro-Israel. (Random tangent: this "war" isn't a religious thing, it is just Israel wanting something and the US wanting a foothold in the Middle East. Palestine has always had Jews living there, they are welcoming to Jews. Don't turn this into something it is not. Don't be anti-Semitic and don't be pro-genocide. Not to be childish about it, but why can't we all just get along?!)
This was a wonderfully human and heartbreaking account of this terrible, genocidal situation and how powerful propaganda is and how painful it is to witness that happen to your own committee. (But it doesn't have to happen to you for you to care, be human.)
Also, I love this cover, I think it's so pretty!
Thank you to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!
This was also a very unique way of telling this story and sharing this information that the author wanted to share. This isn't just a story of Palestine and the devastation of its people and of Gaza, this is the author's experience of seeing all of that happen through her own life. Sarah Aziza is half American and half Palestinian, raised in America and as a very white-passing person at that. She explains how she experienced racism and propaganda and watching how people displayed that towards her. Since she's white-passing, others had to come to terms with their own racism because she's "not like the others" and other sentiments like that. (AKA racism.)
But beyond Sarah dealing with racism and propaganda about the years upon years upon years of war on Palestine, Sarah dealt with an eating disorder. You see how she is not just dealing with one difficult thing, but many. And how the two are related.
I think that everyone needs to read this book, if you are pro-Palestine or pro-Israel. (Random tangent: this "war" isn't a religious thing, it is just Israel wanting something and the US wanting a foothold in the Middle East. Palestine has always had Jews living there, they are welcoming to Jews. Don't turn this into something it is not. Don't be anti-Semitic and don't be pro-genocide. Not to be childish about it, but why can't we all just get along?!)
This was a wonderfully human and heartbreaking account of this terrible, genocidal situation and how powerful propaganda is and how painful it is to witness that happen to your own committee. (But it doesn't have to happen to you for you to care, be human.)
Also, I love this cover, I think it's so pretty!
Thank you to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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