Use the link at right to access the story map created for this project. The maps represent research done by the authors, with the aim of providing resources to students, as a starting place to understanding Palestine, Global Palestine, and the Palestinian diaspora.
The first map shows the world, with the countries of the Arab World filled in. Points on the map show birthplaces and residences of various poets from the Arab World, both Arab and Jewish. Poets included were chosen from the anthology "the flag of childhood poems from the Middle East," edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and published in 2002. Noha Mahoma-Akkari selected poets who wrote about Palestine from this collection to highlight here. While not all poets are Palestinian, or even Arab, they all share an experience of the Arab world, its various diasporas, and of course, Palestine.
The second map places The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in an international context with the University of Texas at San Antonio Special Collections, United Nations Archives in New York City, and the United Nations Institutional Memory Section in Geneva. Each institution holds materials documenting global Palestine—the Naomi Shihab Nye Papers, or records of Palestine.
The third map focuses on one very famous poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Darwish was a celebrated poet who wrote about dispossession and exile, from his own personal experiences. We see in this map of murals and graffiti across the Arab world and into Europe, how beloved he and his poetry was, to a global community.