Song of the Caged Bird

**For political readers and anyone invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Marcello Di Cintio's Song of the Caged Bird is a refreshing look at Palestinian resistance--through literature and the power of books.
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When Marcello Di Cintio began teaching at the Palestine Writing Workshop in Ramallah, he avoided making reference to the occupation in his assignments at first--to see if his students addressed it on their own--and he soon learned that it touches all aspects of Palestinian life. Curious how Palestinian literature could operate with its people so tied to a single narrative, Di Cintio began a journey through the Palestinian world of books: from the monument to the poet Mahmoud Darwish to the volumes in the Nablus Prisoners' library; from one of the West Bank's most successful bookshops to a century-old library in Jerusalem run by a family with a lineage in that city many centuries older. What he found is a world of identity and resistance that is considerably more complex--and potentially more hopeful--than what we see splashed across our screens.