BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/Detroit X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Detroit BEGIN:VEVENT UID:34385@arabamerica.com DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20250522T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20250522T203000 DTSTAMP:20250506T170619Z URL:https://www.arabamerica.com/events/the-hollow-half-a-memoir-of-bodies- and-borders-by-sarah-aziza/ SUMMARY:The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza DESCRIPTION:CHICAGO\, IL\n\nWe are honored to host Sarah Aziza for an event celebrating The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders. For this eve nt\, Sarah will be joined in conversation by Eman Abdelhadi.\n\nPlease not e: This event is free to attend\, but registration is required. Masks are required for our in-person events.\n\nA brush with death. An ancestral hau nting. A century of family secrets. Sarah Aziza’s searing\, genre-bendin g memoir traces three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to t he Midwest to New York City—and back\n\n“You were dead\, Sarah\, you w ere 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 retu rn to the land of the living. Aziza’s crisis is a rupture that brings bo th her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begi n in the hospital cafeteria\, when a mysterious incident summons the famil iar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother.\n\nIn the months follow ing\, as she responds to a series of ghostly dreams\, Aziza unearths famil y secrets that reveal the ways her own trauma and anorexia echo generation s of violent Palestinian displacement and erasure—and how her fight to r ecover builds on a century of defiant survival and love. As she moves towa rds this legacy\, Aziza learns to resist the forces of colonization\, deni al\, and patriarchy both within and outside her.\n\nWeaving timelines\, la nguages\, geographies\, and genres\, The Hollow Half probes the contradict ions and contingencies that create “nation” and “history.” Blazing with honesty\, urgency\, and poetry\, this stunning debut memoir is a fea rless call to imagine both the self and the world anew.\n\nSARAH AZIZA is a Palestinian American writer\, translator\, and artist with roots in ‘I bdis and Deir al-Balah\, Gaza. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and numerous grants from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting\, she has l ived and worked in Saudi Arabia\, Algeria\, Jordan\, South Africa\, the We st Bank\, and the United States. Her award-winning journalism\, poetry\, e ssays\, and experimental nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker\, The Baffler\, Harper’s Magazine\, Mizna\, Lux\, The Washington Post\, The In tercept\, The Rumpus\, NPR\, The Margins\, and The Nation\, among other pu blications.\n\nEman Abdelhadi is an organizer\, writer and scholar. She is assistant professor at the University of Chicago\, where her research foc uses on gender\, migration and religion. Her academic work has appeared in Social Forces\, Gender &\; Society\, the British Journal of Sociology\ , and other outlets. She is also a columnist at In These Times magazine an d co-author of the sci-fi novel: Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune\, 2052-2072 (Common Notions Press\, 2022). Abdelha di organizes with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at UChicago\, Scholars for Social Justice\, Sociologists for Palestine\, and other form ations.\n\nAccessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore\, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first- come\, first-serve basis. We have dimmable\, non-fluorescent lights. To re quest ASL interpretation for this event\, please email events@womenandchil drenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questio ns or access needs\, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com. ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.arabamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2 025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-06-at-1.04.06 PM.png LOCATION:Women & Children First\, 5233North Clark Street \, Chicago\, IL\, 60640\, United States GEO:41.97727;-87.668133 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=5233North Clark Street \, C hicago\, IL\, 60640\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Women & Chi ldren First:geo:41.97727,-87.668133 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Detroit X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Detroit BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20250309T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR