Said's Memoirs: Feeling Out of Place

Author: (American) Edward W. Said / Peng Huading
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This book records a world that has largely been lost or forgotten, the world of my early life. Several years ago, I received a medical diagnosis that seemed fatal, and I felt it necessary to leave a subjective account of the Arab world where I was born and raised. In the book, I recall people and places that no longer exist.
Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935, but most of his youth was spent in Cairo and Lebanon. This is a moving memoir that records a past that is now fundamentally irretrievable—Palestine is now Israel; Lebanon has been transformed by two decades of civil war; colonial and monarchical Egypt vanished in 1952. As an Arab Christian, a Palestinian holding an American passport, and someone who could never quite decide whether his native language was Arabic or English, along with an inexplicably British name added to his Arab surname, he always felt out of place wherever he went, an eternal outsider. As someone who had been away from his homeland for many years and faced the constant threat of death, Said earnestly reflects on his life, traces his roots, and recalls his strict father who gave him a "Victorian-style" education, and his mother who he revered all his life, encouraged him, yet whose feelings toward him were ambiguous and contradictory. He also reflects on his upbringing and the environment he grew up in. With the "me" of today, he explores and writes about the "me" of yesterday, reconstructing a relationship with his inner self, making peace with his deceased parents, and attempting to reclaim history for his nation in a personal way. He unites his divided Arab and American experiences, speaking and advocating for the oppressed and silenced Palestinians through his discordant identity.
This book is also a story about leaving one's homeland and wandering, but Said discovers that the resulting fragmented, multiple, and fluid identities are actually a blessing. He once said, "Never feel too much at home anywhere." Eventually, "feeling out of place" became his active choice.