The Passport and the Pen: A Chilean-Palestinian Woman Writes the Body Through Borders and Bloodlines

Join us on April 3 at 5 PM in the BCC Dogwood Room for an evening with acclaimed Chilean-Palestinian writer Lina Meruane, author of Becoming Palestinian and Seeing Red. In this special event, Meruane will reflect on the experience of crossing literal and metaphorical borders—between Chile and Palestine, illness and health, personal memory, and collective history.

With the Chilean-Palestinian community—the largest Palestinian diaspora outside the Middle East, estimated at over half a million people—as a backdrop, Meruane’s work moves through questions of identity, exile, and the female body under political and medical scrutiny. Drawing from her autobiographical essays and fiction, she explores how bloodlines and borderlines shape belonging and how writing becomes a form of resistance, survival, and return.

The event will feature a conversation on her journey to Palestine, the intersections of gender, illness, and displacement in her work, and short readings in English. A Q&A will follow.

Don't miss this opportunity to hear from one of the most powerful literary voices writing at the crossroads of Latin America, the Middle East, and the body itself.

Light fare and refreshments will be served.

For questions contact Professor Silvia Marsans-Sakly – smarsans-sakly@fairfield.edu

Event sponsored by the Humanities Institute, Islamic World Studies, Department of Modern Languages & Literatures, English Department, and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies