Sarah Aziza on Hunger and Home

“This book taught me that life is going to hurt a lot as long as I’m here. There are certain types of pain that are actually a sign that I have my humanity, that I’m doing something right. I’m trying not to disappear— to run away from the pain that is just the pain of love.”

Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer with roots in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. Her journalism, poetry, and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the Baffler, Harper’s, Mizna, and the Nation, among others. She has received residencies and fellowships from Fulbright, the Tin House Writer’s Workshop, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Her first book, The Hollow Half, is a work of experimental memoir exploring the intertwined legacies of diaspora, colonialism, and the American dream.