Ibtisam Barakat in Chestnut Hill Local
On July 22 and 23, Al-Bustan was pleased to host noted author Ibtisam Barakat to conduct poetry workshops with our campers. See her interview with Len Lear of the Chestnut Hill Local. . .
Working Tirelessly to heal social injustice Palestinian Author brings tales of war to Hill
by Len Lear, Chestnut Hill Local
Published: July 30, 2009
[...]“Barakat, who spent two days with students at Springside last week, is on a peripatetic mission of peace and justice. Born in Beit Hanina, East Jerusalem, she spent most of her formative years in Ramallah, Palestine (generally referred to in news stories as the West Bank). After earning a degree in English literature from Birzeit University on the West Bank, she came to the U.S. in 1986 for an internship with The Nation magazine. She later earned two M.A. degrees — in journalism and in human development and family studies – at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Just before coming to Springside, Barakat had attended a world poetry conference in Caracas, Venezuela, as the Palestinian representative. Prior to that, she was in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Oman for one month as “author in residence” working with middle school and high school students. Her memoir, Tasting the Sky; a Palestinian Childhood, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was named by Booklist as one of the top 10 biographies for youth and in 2008 won the International Reading Association’s Best Non-Fiction Book Award for Children and Young Adults.”
This school year I taught at two public schools in Philadelphia: John Moffet Elementary and Feltonville Intermediate. At the after-school program at Moffet, the students have been writing their own poetry by exploring the works of Naomi Shihab Nye. We’ve been using her poetry to understand poetic convention and structure, and to simply enjoy it. Her poems have been sources of creative activity for us, like making scenes and thinking of images to help us create our own poems.
