NO OLIVE BRANCH FOR ME by Nadia Shammas & Natasha Alterici
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“…I’ve come to realize my biggest form of resistance is to be visible… To thrive, to be publicly Palestinian & publicly human, is resistance. Survival is resistance.”
TITLE—No Olive Branch For Me
AUTHOR—Nadia Shammas & Natasha Alterici
PUBLISHER—nadiashammas.com
GENRE—comic
SETTING—Palestine & in diaspora
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Palestinian heritage & history, displacement & dispossession, identity, claiming agency, existence as resistance, art & community, responsibility, pride, migration & immigration
My thoughts:
I’m new to graphic novels & comics having read my first only just the end of last year but I already love them. I especially love having the addition of facial expressions to the text & dialogue as well as the unique worldbuilding & scene-setting details that make everything come that much more alive in the reader’s imagination.
Shammas’s comic is a short but beautiful look at the experience of dispossession & displacement, alienation & otherness, & maintaining a strong sense of internal, cultural, & historical pride in the face of prejudice & misperception.
At the end of the work is a series of interview responses from other Palestinian authors & artists who discuss how they view their responsibility as a displaced Palestinian & the intersection between their art, their identity, & their responsibility to their heritage & fellow Palestinians.
“Our fight is not just about land or an apartheid wall. We are fighting against dehumanization, ethnic cleansing and the erasure of our history.” — Layla Ali Abdeljabbar
I would recommend this book to readers who want to read about the themes of displacement & identity—especially within a Palestinian & Indigenous framework from artists’ perspectives. This book is best read on your bus/train commute? on your lunch break? before class starts? It is literally like a 5-minute read including the comic & the interviews. Oh & did I already say that it’s available to read for free online?
Final note: So many great graphic novels were rec’d by readers in our #QueerPalestineReadathon initiative & I am so excited to read all of them!
“I feel there is a legacy [as a Palestinian-American], yes, absolutely. I can't explain it well in words; all I can say is that we are, and we will be, those who go back.” — Iasmin Omar Ata
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Season: all of them!
Music pairing: Sounds of Palestine Playlist on Spotify
Further Reading—
SQUIRE by Nadia Shammas & Sara Alfageeh
SHUBEIK LUBEIK by Deena Mohamed
NAYRA AND THE DJINN by Iasmin Omar Ata
CONFETTI REALMS by Nadia Shammas
THE SPECIMEN’S APOLOGY by George Abraham
NAMESAKE by NS Nuseibeh
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