“Our culture is larger / than the life of the chick pea”: A Thematic Analysis of Food and Foodways in Palestinian Poetry from the Twentieth to the Twenty-first Century

Since the early twentieth century, Palestinians have used poetry as a means of remembering and celebrating their homeland amid its occupation and colonization. Naomi Shihab Nye, Rashid Husayn, and Zeina Azzam are understudied poets of Palestinian heritage. All three experiment with varying depictions of Palestinian food and foodways, and placing their poetry into conversation enables a greater understanding of how and why food is an enduring metaphorical vehicle for mourning, soothing, or surviving the Palestinian poet’s physical and emotional alienation from Palestine. There is a generational distinction in how poets identify said alienation. Husayn, who comes from an older generation of mid-twentieth-century poets, approaches food as an extension of the landscape, as the edible element that connects the Palestinian body to Palestinian land. Conversely, Azzam, a contemporary poet active in the early twenty-first century, represents food via culinary metaphor and memories of food-related traditions. Nye, a poet who began her career towards the end of the twentieth century, represents the transition point between these two poetic usages of food.