1917 - 2003
Palestinian poet.
Fadwa Tuqan was born to the eminent Tuqan family of Nablus, one of the leading traditional families of central Palestine, which produced several notable figures in Palestinian education, literature, and politics. Like her elder brother, Ibrahim, she became one of the most influential poets in modern Palestinian literature, publishing her first collection of poetry, Wahdi ma al-Ayyam (Along with the days), in 1952.
Her work is noted for having broken with traditional Arabic poetic styles, introducing, for example, free verse into modern Arabic poetry. Tuqan's poetry is also noteworthy for discussing sensual themes, as well as for depicting the social conditions facing Palestinians, especially Palestinian women. Her 1985 autobiography, Rihla Jabaliyya, Rihla Saʿba (A mountainous journey, a difficult journey), provides a forceful discussion of the plight of women in Palestine prior to the first Arab - Israel War and the creation of Israel in 1948. Starting with the Israeli occupation of her native West Bank in June 1967, Tuqan also began writing poetry with nationalist themes. Some of her poems were printed in the underground nationalist publication Filastin in the mid-1970s. Israeli general and politician Moshe Dayan once remarked that the power of just one of her poems, like her famous "The Freedom Fighter and the Land," was equal to that of several Palestinian guerrilla fighters. She was not above participating in secret Arab-Israeli contacts, however. Dayan met with her twice in late 1968, when he was Israel's defense minister, as part of his secret effort to strike up a dialogue with Arab leaders. Tuqan once passed along a message from Dayan to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and offered to contact Yasir Arafat, leader of the al-Fatah movement.
In 1990 she was awarded the Palestine Liberation Organization's Jerusalem Award for Culture and Arts, as well as the Honorary Palestine Prize for Poetry in 1996. Fadwa Tuqan died in Nablus, where she had lived all her life, on 13 December 2003. A line from one of her poems sums up her wish to be buried in her native Palestine: "Enough for me to die on her earth, be buried in her, to melt and vanish into her soil."
Bibliography
Fischbach, Michael R. "Fadwa Tuqan." In Encyclopedia of the Palestinians, edited by Philip Mattar. New York: Facts On File, 2000.
Jayyusi, Salma, ed. Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Tuqan, Fadwa. A Mountainous Journey: An Autobiography, translated by Olive Kenny and Naomi Shihab Nye. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1990.
— ABLA M. AMAWI
UPDATED BY MICHAEL R. FISCHBACH
