“save your tears to water soil of uprooted olive trees”:
The hydropolitics of Palestine as a vessel for memory and resistance in Hala Alyan’s and Suheir Hammad’s poetry
Ollie Köhn-Haskins '25
Literature & Classics, Philosophy, Media Studies
Throughout contemporary Palestinian-American poetry, various symbolic representations of water take on central roles in the remediation of traumatic memories of occupation, genocide, and exile, bearing witness to the historical and ongoing suffering of Palestinian communities. This thesis analyzes Suheir Hammad’s and Hala Alyan’s powerful use of water symbolism, which expresses repressed and actively erased memory, drawing connections between various anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles to resist Zionist narratives and resurface agency, resilience, and hope for a free Palestine.
What drew you to explore this topic?
At this moment, it is important to center Palestinian voices and resistance and work against the Zionist narratives which are being used to justify an ongoing genocide which many international communities, from politicians to corporations to academia, are still complicit in. Water symbolism was an unexpected motif that I encountered throughout my initial research, and proved itself to be essential in understanding how Palestinian resistance poetry can bring together various concepts of anti-colonial, gender-based, and environmental justice, building international solidarity.
What’s the next chapter in your journey post-graduation?
I am enrolled in the Comparative Literary Studies research master's at the UU and aim to continue focusing on researching literature as a transformative vehicle for resistance, especially in terms of queer liberation, human/nonhuman relations, and decolonialism.