Rest in My Shade: A Poem about Roots
Description
A moving poem that echoes the love Palestinians have for their olive trees and their deep connection to their land. Features seventeen major Palestinian artists. Rest in My Shade is a poetic story about displacement, identity and loss recited by an ancient olive tree. It is illustrated with olive trees created in various media by Palestinian artists living around the world. Millions of people are being uprooted, separated from their families, and risk losing their culture as a result of war, poverty, repression, and climate injustice. Rest in My Shade is a tool for building understanding, compassion, and dialog. Together, we can build a truly just world—one in which we can all live where we want, move freely and without fear, value and share the traditions that make us who we are, and feel dignity and acceptance wherever we are. Rest in My Shade is a poetic story about displacement, identity and loss recited by an ancient olive tree. It is illustrated with olive trees created in various media by Palestinian artists living around the world. Millions of people are being uprooted, separated from their families, and risk losing their culture as a result of war, poverty, repression, and climate injustice. Rest in My Shade is a tool for building understanding, compassion, and dialog. Together, we can build a truly just world—one in which we can all live where we want, move freely and without fear, value and share the traditions that make us who we are, and feel dignity and acceptance wherever we are.
Praise for Rest in My Shade: A Poem about Roots
"Rest in My Shade: A Poem About Roots by Nora Lester Murad and Danna Masad is a beautifully crafted story of the Palestinian ordeal as understood through a primary metaphor of the olive tree, so bound up with Palestinian identity, both because of the rootedness to place of olive trees and the life nurturing qualities of olive oil. The book is a brilliant collaboration between its authors and a group of world class Palestinian painters. The lyric words of the text give clear meanings to the vibrant beauty of the visual art. In its few pages the tragedy and the transcendence of the Palestinian narrative are both memorably vivified. You will never regret having this book in your possession.
— Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University
An exquisite love song to Palestine and all its wonderful long-suffering people, to patience, the joy of fruitful simple living, and the power of holy, resilient trees. May the energy of tending and protecting our ancestral nourishment long endure.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners
I celebrate this wondrous book. It illumines the world as olive oil might, regardless of the fire that's touched it. Palestine and Palestinians continue to produce enduring imaginative art. They're here to stay.
— Fady Joudah, author of Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance
Poetry and art, to paraphrase Jonathan Bate, are the song of the earth. These exquisite canvases and poetic commentary are the songs of uprooting of the people and olive trees from the earth of Palestine, and their enduring resistance. They resonate with the work of other indigenous eco-artists whose land and animals have been the unfortunate targets of colonial greed.
— Sharif S. Elmusa, author of Flawed Landscape
Rest in My Shade is a universal story. As elegant as the rolling hills of the countryside that is its backdrop, as startling as the violent upheaval that is the refugee experience, it is truly a story of all of us.
— Saul Takahashi, Former Deputy Head of Office, occupied Palestinian territory office, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights