Vance Miguel Johnson’s Reviews > Out of Place: A Memoir > Status Update

I think Said doesn’t fully address his economic class. Theres some understanding based on his father’s successful Cairo business and the many Pell who work for their family, but what did that translate to in their New York trip where they stayed in hotels and went to summer camp in Maine. How expensive was that?

Edward’s pursuit of Farid’s story is so intimate. I’ll definitely remember the sorrow.

The last words Edward Said’s father ever said to him, while dying, were; “I’m worried about what those Zionists will do to you. Be careful.” That is heartbreaking.

The several repetitions of paragraph structured like, ‘this family member was doing some normal Job like working at the Jerusalem YMCA in 1947’ and then finishing the paragraph with ‘they were never able to return to their home,’ after the 1948 Nakba was powerful. The sudden break in the text followed by six pages of photos of life (the stationary store, vacations, school, etc) forced me to feel the sorrow.

“By some devilish irony I find myself with an intransigent, treacherous leukemia, which ostrichlike I try to banish from my mind entirely, attempting […] to live in my system of time, working, sensing lateness and deadlines and that feeling of insufficient accomplishment I learned fifty years ago […] I secretly wonder to myself whether the system of duties and deadlines may now save me” Edward, I cry for you.