Women Unsilenced

Women Unsilenced: Hope, Freedom, and Music in Palestine explores how Palestinian women use music to express, protest, and celebrate their identities. Divided into two parts, the book is told through with contrasting narrative styles. In Part One, the author uses evocative autoethnography to illuminate their experiences of travelling through Palestine and meeting five women musicians, spanning three generations. In Part Two, the author uses narrative case studies to center the women’s voices. They share harrowing accounts of daily life that chronicle the untold stories of women living under military occupation and patriarchal oppression. These living stories reveal the unwavering determination of three generations of women to regain their cultural identity, educate their youth and take their place among the peace-loving nations of the world. Their stories challenge dominant assumptions about Palestinians and women in the Middle East and disrupt assumptions that are rooted in settler-colonialist and imperialist narratives. The stories of these women are beacons of hope, celebrating the universal value of self-determination.

Offering an intimate look at the lives and identities of Palestinian women as celebrated through music, this is a useful resource for students and scholars across Music Education, Women and Gender Studies, and Political Science. It will also be of interest to those completing their own narrative research and the general reader wanting to learn more about Palestinian womens’ everyday lives.