Exile's Return: The Making of a Palestinian American

by Fawaz Turki

A memoir tells of a Palestinian exile's return to his family's West Bank home after forty years of Western life, his dismay at the rigid conformity of Palestinian society, and his recognition that he has become a Palestinian American

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Yara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in absolute awe of this book. I struggle to find the words. Fawaz has written a story too true and too real. His dark pessimism, depression, his personal revolt, and all that came due to his story; as someone who lived honor killing first hand, exiled, someone who has spoken without fear or sugarcoating of what it meant in those days to be an official at the PLO - just enchanting. He took me on journeys where I would have to stop mid page and ask myself “what the hell is happening here?” - his journey through Asia, his meetings, his drug addiction. You will never read a more real Palestinian exile story, familiar to the few of us who have managed to built multiple homes outside the Arab or Palestinian community in our adopted homeland. This book is unlike any other book I have read, especially to me, someone who has rarely seen any resemblance of my personal story anywhere, Turki has come as close and real enough for me to relate. This is the story of those you may never know, or may know only shallow parts of. It is a heavy book, it took me months to get through it, I needed many breaks while reading it, and I cried at the last page. What a book.

[clara · Rating 2 out of 5]

i did not find this memoir compelling. it is just some guy returning to palestine, doing a lot of drugs, and making broad generalizations about muslims and arab society. like, this is a book about his life so i'm not sure what else he would have written about, but the entire book felt very surface-level to me. it's like a very long rant. i think a large majority of muslims and palestinians would disagree with his assumptions that they are backwards or incapable of sophisticated resistance or not sufficiently independent to practice islam.