Drowning Out and Breathing In: Water as a Vessel for Palestinian Memory and Resistance in Hala Alyan's "Hamra" and Suheir Hammad's "a prayer band"

Abstract

Throughout contemporary Palestinian-American poetry, various symbolic representations of water take on central roles in the poetic mediation of traumatic memories of occupation, genocide, and exile, bearing witness to the historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinian communities. This essay analyzes the hydropolitics of Suheir Hammad’s “a prayer band” (2005) and Hala Alyan’s “Hamra” (2016) through a focus on the transnational and postgenerational mediation of these repressed and erased memories to show how the poets resist Zionist narratives and resurface Palestinian agency, resilience, and hope.