Editor's Path
Diaspora Voices
أصوات الشتات
Scattered by exile, they carried Palestine into the world’s universities, galleries, labs, and screens — global lives that never lost their center.
Exile dispersed Palestinians across the globe — and from that dispersal came a remarkable flowering. In the lecture halls of New York, the galleries of London, the laboratories of California, and the cinemas of Europe, Palestinians built world-class lives while keeping a homeland in view.
This path follows those whose horizons went global without losing their center. Their achievements belong to the world; their longing, unmistakably, to Palestine.
Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience.
Edward Said, “Reflections on Exile”
People in this Collection
- Edward Said — From New York he became the world's foremost voice for Palestine and the founder of postcolonial thought.
- Mahmoud Darwish — Beirut, Paris, exile after exile — he made the diaspora itself into poetry.
- Ghassan Kanafani — In Beirut's exile he built a literature of return before his life was cut short.
- Jabra Ibrahim Jabra — From Bethlehem to Baghdad, he became a towering man of letters across the Arab world.
- Rashid Khalidi — From Columbia University, one of the most influential historians of the Palestinian story.
- Omar M. Yaghi — Born to refugees, he became a Nobel-winning chemist who founded an entire field of materials science.
- Hasib Sabbagh — From exile he built one of the Arab world's great construction empires — and funded Palestinian institutions.
- Mona Hatoum — Stranded in London by war, she became one of the most important artists of her generation.
- Elia Suleiman — From Paris and Nazareth, he turned the absurdity of exile into singular, deadpan cinema.
- Hany Abu-Assad — A two-time Oscar nominee whose films carried Palestinian stories to global audiences.
- Abdel Bari Atwan — From London he built a pan-Arab media voice read and watched across the world.
- Farouk Shami — A refugee's son who built a Houston beauty empire and never stopped investing back home.
Far from home, and never away from it. These are the diaspora voices.