Books by Penny Johnson
Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine
An award-winning author explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a surprising lens: the animals trying to survive in occupied hotspots
In August of 2016, Israeli police officers arrested a Palestinian donkey in the Jordan Valley. The charge? Not having the correct paperwork.
It's an image as sad (and strangely common) as it is symbolic: No creature great or small is free from the absurdities of the Occupied Territories.
Companions in Conflict is a surprising investigation into the deeply intertwined lives of the region's human and animal populations: From camel beauty contests, to a herd of "illegal" Palestinian cows hunted down by Israeli soldiers; from a hyena in a wolf pack that becomes a symbol of Middle East peace, to the tragic story of the now-taxidermied inhabitants of the West Bank's only zoo--who were frightened to death by Israeli explosive devices.
Drawing on three decades of living in the region, Penny Johnson's insightful writing reveals what these and many other animals' fates tell us about the current state of Israel and Palestine. What's more, looking forward, she introduces a new generation of environmental activists to us, who represent the region's best hope for conservation, collaboration, and justice for all creatures.
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Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials
by Raja Shehadeh, Penny Johnson
A profound meditation on memory and the preservation of Palestinian heritage, from the award-winning author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I.
Forgotten uncovers the hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine—now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories—and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
From ancient city ruins to the Nabi 'Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialized, and what lies unseen, abandoned, or erased—and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land.
In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba—the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians—but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.
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$17.99