The Visibility of Palestinian Refugees: Women in Revolutionary Narratives A Gender Discourse

In contemporary Palestinian fiction, gender differences, specifically focused on sexual politics and home economics, are submerged by national issues which loom over the life of Palestinian refugees, irrespective of gender. The majority of Ghassan Kanafani’s literary works perpetuate this trend; excluding the female protagonist in Umm Sa’ad, women are rarely central to the plotline, or shaping the narrative’s claim. Despite the marginality of these female characters, Kanafani does not sacrifice the tensions determining and defining the role of these characters. He also does not fall prey to classical feminist definitions of sexual politics. For example, Kate Millet (1971) notes the significance of power and domination in contemporary literary descriptions of sexual politics. These concepts do not seem to be the decisive factors shaping women’s destinies in Kanafani’s revolutionary writing. Whether they are silent, absorbed in an internal monologue, or speak their minds candidly, Kanafani’s female characters seem to be moved by intuition and natural gifts in their definition of existence. Choosing not to ignore the gender issue in favor of the national cause, Kanafani unravels several generations of women as he explores their narratives in a changing world, without dismissing the cultural thread that binds them together. Thus, the female characters’ efforts to move towards self-awareness are framed by their response to the historical conditions traumatizing or elevating the lives of Palestinian refugees. In his three respective novels, namely Rijal fil-Shams (Men in the Sun), Ma tabaqqa la-Kum (All That’s Left to You), and Umm Sa’ad, Kanafani portrays his female characters as dynamic, developing in the context of a specific time and space; there is a considerable shift in his characters as they react to the compelling situations in which they find themselves. During this process of change, the female characters shift from a state of total passivity and nominal self-recognition to one of partial participation in their surrounding context, and eventually to a state of full awareness in which they begin to play an active role, not only in shaping theit fate, but also the fate of their people