This book has been a great reading experience. Thanks to the author and the publisher for bringing this book to life.

I was fascinated by this book. I love memoirs, and I have been trying to read more diversely in order to learn more about cultures, histories, and countries that I don't know much about. This book hits so many of those points. Mona is telling her story of discovering her mother's history. As she shares her struggles along with her mother's, and others like them, we, as American readers, learn bout a point in history that is never talked about in our history classes.

Absolutely stunning story of one woman searching for her national identity and tracing back her roots. 'In My Mother's Footsteps' is a book about the people of Palestine, their yearning for the stolen motherland and their efforts to stay connected to their identity miles away from the place of their origin.

The author, Mona Hajjar Halaby, simultaneously narrates her own story but also the story of her mother, a Palestinian who was decades ago forced to leave her homeland and start anew. Mona has never set a foot on Palestinian soil, everything she has to cherish is stories and vivid descriptions of the land and the long passed time her mother shared with her. Until she decides that she wants to live in Palestine, experience Palestine, and hope for Palestine. Her journey to the holy land is different from that her mother had, Mona is not walking away from the olive trees and ancient architecture, Mona is running to them, ready to walk in her mother's footsteps.

This book deserves all the love and appreciation. Even though this is Mona's and her family's personal story, it is a story of many who went through the same as well. It also sheds a light on the important issues remaining Palestinians face on a daily basis. Mona's efforts to help the Palestinian children mirror her intent to save the Palestinian future. The Palestinian issue is definitely not a Muslim issue nor a national issue. It is indeed a matter of worldwide concern.

I highly recommend this book to all readers and those interested in the topic. Reading memoirs like this will definitely help in understanding why learning and 'fighting' for Palestine are so important. Mona's writing is very engaging and personal, making this book very enjoyable, despite the heavy topics discussed.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ebook in an exchange for an honest review!

This is a book I chose to read/listen to because I am unaware of the actual basis of the issues in Palestine and everything related to that. I originally got myself an ARC of the book but ended up listening to an audiobook of it and only checking out the photos in the ebook. The photos do add perspective to the narrative and therefore might be an added bonus for anyone trying to decide between the different formats.

The author is the daughter of a Christian refugee who fled from Palestine when she was a girl and only returns over the course of the book in her eighties. In spite of this distance, the country is etched into the author’s heart and mind. She even marries a man with similar emotions. The author is very clear about the tone of the narrative and the story she intends to convey. She has written it well and the narrator did a great job in conveying the weight that is carried through the entire course of the book.

The author teaches conflict resolution and uses it at the school level to try and make it easier for the average citizen living in troubled areas to figure out the smaller issues. I found it interesting and all the other methods discussed were illuminating as well.

The issue comes from my own personal bias. It is not an issue per se, but something that changed the way I viewed the book. I come from a country with a colonial past. The very fact that I am only comfortable expressing these thoughts in the language that I am in is a testament to that past (however long ago it might be). People did go into countries sure that their culture was superior and in some cases the only way things should be and then deployed their own changes. They took over lands with a previous history and altered them in several countries around the globe. Some of the histories are unavailable or not universally accepted because people ensured that it was so. This does not reduce my sadness for the lives lost, injustice or family history washed away for all the people mentioned in the book, it just meant that I listened to this just as I had for so many older people and countries.

I thought the author covered a very unique perspective from her family’s side and that of an average citizen of Palestine in the present day. She showed us the privilege of her citizenship and the relative ease it granted her. It opened my eyes to a whole new world, but I also felt that it could have been a shorter narrative. Given that she used very fitting words to convey her meaning, she got the information across quite quickly. After a point, I felt my attention wander and that did not feel appropriate given the seriousness of the content. I would have appreciated the book even more if it had ended sooner than it did. I would still recommend this to people who are curious about the conflict or what it meant for the people on the ground.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

In My Mother's Footsteps by Mona Hajjar Halaby is a story about discovering her identity. How far will someone go to belong. It also brings to light how conflict shapes human lives and how some things are out of our control, yet we try to make sense of it. A must-read novel in this conflicted world, that urges to be kind.

This is a moving, deeply personal account of Mona Halaby, her mother, and most importantly, of Palestine. Mona Hajjar Halaby lived in Palestine for a year, to develop a teaching module for non-violent conflict resolution for children of a private school. Halaby memoirises this experience, while also weaving in her Palestinian mother's experiences, and her own search for her roots. Halaby's mother was a teenager during what the Palestinians refer to as 'Nakba', or catastrophe, in 1948. The best parts of the book are her memories of her life, and the vivid letters she sends to the author. The events of the Nakba are rendered in all their horror, through a very personal viewpoint. I can't being to imagine how hard that must have been for her to relive the trauma of losing her home forever in her letters.
Halaby's writing is absolutely excellent when she's writing about her search for places familiar to her mother-her house, her school, the YMCA where she sang in the choir. She writes very movingly about the emotional turmoil she goes through when she sees strangers occupying her mother's old house-and it is an occupation, given that her mother's family left the house under duress, with her mother's brother spirited away to a labour camp. When you read the book, and then take a look at the cover, the import of that is much clearer, and nearly had me in tears. Halaby's accounts of the tribulations and the daily stresses that Palestinians undergo are harrowing to just read about-heavily armed checkpoints that take hours to navigate, children's schoolbuses stormed by IDF with guns, parents having to plan for contingencies during school trips, in case checkpoints suddenly close and they can't make it back in time.
I'm quite ashamed to say that I haven't read any other Palestinian accounts of the creation of the state of Israel, and this one isn't going to be the last. These are important and necessary correctives to books like Leon Uris' Exodus', and Chaim Potok's 'The Chosen', that give you the Zionist view.

This was absolutely amazing. I could have read on. 2021 is really shaping up as the year of memoirs for me, these books are the best I read, and I am glad this one was also brilliant. Loved the tone of voice, the observations and related very much to the notion that our parent's history is sort of woven into our DNA, I have often felt like that as well, being a child and grandchild of refugees myself.

Just as every coin has two sides, so too there are two sides to every story. I have read many books from the Jewish point of view over the years, but only a few from the Palestinian side. The irony being that for so many years prior to the present situation, people of both races had co-existed quite amicably. As a Christian, I have no trouble understanding the Jewish position, but....as a Christian, I can now see there is also a Palestinian position. I did not realise the Palestinian way of life & the ongoing depth of hurt inflicted, it is only when names start to be given to some of the people involved, that the plight of the ‘other’ side becomes more real. (Maybe this is the way history should be taught...) I can expect the anger, it is the sadness which ‘gets’ me. If only Abraham had realised the centuries of conflict he was setting in place by being impatient for God’s timing... In this book we are hearing about the ‘bad Israelis, there must be many ‘good’ ones as well : prior to this my image of Palestinians was largely framed by Yasser Arafat & the PLO. I believe Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is doing a very good thing, giving young people from both sides the opportunity to work together & get to know & respect each other as people, regardless of ethnicity. But what will it take to open the minds of the leadership : is it even possible? It would take a miracle, so that is what we must pray for.

A truly compelling and moving account of Mona Halaby’s search for her Palestinian roots and her mother’s past, the mother who was exiled from her native land in the 1948 Naqba. There are many memoirs of Palestinians forced out of the country and many about life in besieged Palestine today. It’s an ever present heartbreak. And they are all worth reading. But this one stood out for me as it had an added “extra” in that Mona Halaby was invited to go to Jerusalem to share her expertise in conflict resolution with children. The psychological effects on children of the terrible situation in Palestine are wonderfully conveyed here, and it is perhaps something that doesn't often garner enough attention. Just as the effects of having to serve in the IDF on generations of young people in Israel hasn’t, in my view, been explored enough. So I found this beautifully written book interesting on so many levels. The personal one, of course, that of Mona Halaby’s mother’s pilgrimage to her old home, and the story of her life after she was expelled in 1948, the glimpse, yet again of the privations and injustices the citizens of Palestine have to face daily, and perhaps above all the damage it is all inflicting on the children. An important book and essential reading for anyone concerned about the continuing and seemingly intractable situation in the Occupied Territories.

Finally! A heart settling story of Palestinian refugees. Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy. I wish I had read this sooner, as I enjoyed it more than I had initially expected. I’m pleased that this is clean, not depressing, and has many good take aways. Readers will enjoy the truth, history, culture, food (especially the food), and family love in this memoir. I love that this book is secular, while many books about 1948 Palestinian Nakba are from Muslim viewpoints. This adds to the peaceful tone of this book. My favorite quotes that I will save forever, “ I’ve never had a problem with Jews having a homeland where they can live in peace and security and have equal rights, but I do have a problem when they deny the same to others…
I am ashamed to be living in a country that advocates justice, democracy, and human rights, yet has been spineless, and even colluding, with the injustices inflicted on the people of Palestine.” The author sums up my own feelings, and I can’t wait to watch her documentary. I will recommend this title to my school library and history teachers.

Wow. Powerful, heart-warming yet heart-breaking and so very real. This book is well written and is so believable, full of history and sets straight what is and has been happening in Palestine over the years.

I love the mother's letters, the emotion portrayed and the stories told. I just couldn't stop reading! This book makes you feel every emotion under the sun and I love that from a book.

I highly recommend this book and think it is one everyone should read.

I think that most people who follow the news must be very aware of the difficult conditions that the Palestinian people live under. It's not easy to know where to start reading about such a complex and emotive issue, but if you are looking for a way to gain some insight into the current situation in Palestine then this memoir, In My Mother's Footsteps, might be a very good place for you to begin. In this book, Mona Hajjar-Halaby, American citizen and daughter of Palestinian refugees, follows two main themes: the first is through her own experiences of working as a teacher in Ramallah and Jerusalem, which shows us much about how Palestinians live under Israeli occupation; and the second is to explore the recollections and stories of her own mother about her life in Palestine before she was forced to flee her homeland during the war of 1948 - and there is plenty of heartbreak to be derived from both sides of the story.

Even though I already had a good idea of what to expect from this book, I still found myself shocked about the reality of life for the Palestinian people. I defy you not to be horrified about the injustice that they experience every day of their lives, and yet there is something so wonderfully compelling about their resilience, their quiet stoicism, their hospitality and their enduring love for their homeland, despite the attempts to subvert their history. In these pages, Mona writes so eloquently about these people and her connection with them, that you cannot fail to be profoundly moved by her words.

For me, it is the parts of the story where she is quite literally walking in the footsteps of her mother that are the most touching, and also the most viscerally powerful. Here, as she visits the significant places from her mother's Palestinian past, we cannot fail to be aware of the true face of war, the plight of refugees, how propaganda can skew reality, and how a fiction can be spun to represent 'alternative facts'. It is in these moments, through the magic of her mother's stories, that Mona really comes to understand her own identity and accept that she is truly Palestinian above all other things - despite what is says in her passport. This part of the story culminates in Mona's mother returning to Jerusalem for an incredibly poignant visit with her daughter, and her mother's bittersweet joy as she visits the places from her past brought tears to my eyes.

There is a lot to take in within this memoir in terms of emotion and historical fact, and I found the best way to appreciate the power of the story was by a combination of written word (via the ebook) and listening to the audio version, narrated with feeling by Lameece Issaq, which allowed me to go over some of the parts again while fully immersing myself in both Mona and her mother's words - and the introduction of the audio book narrated by Mona herself really gets you closer to everything that follows.

I find myself with a lot to reflect on after reading this book. I am grateful to Mona for acknowledging that she and her family come from a position of privilege which many refugees do not enjoy, but I am still struck by the awareness that even though this allowed them freedoms not available to many displaced people their heartbreak remains just as valid.

In a book that is so much about the past, it is easy to think that this is a book about playing the blame game, and in many ways this is true, but Mona's side of the story is very much about the present which balances out the book well and begs the question about what comes next for Palestine. From having heard Mona speak about this memoir, I am aware that she does not consider herself an activist or expert in foreign affairs and as such is unqualified to speculate on how peace can be achieved in Palestine, but I would have liked to have seen a conclusion to the book in which she expresses her personal view on what the future might hold for her spiritual homeland - and perhaps, an acknowledgement that much of the lack of political will to find any real solution has been fostered by her own adopted country. Instead, I was left wondering about how Mona sees the situation playing out, and quite what we can do as bystanders to support the Palestinian people in a meaningful way. However, I will add that if you are interested in these answers to these questions too, then it is worth checking out her fascinating interview with Thread Books to mark the publication of this book, which you can find on their Instagram page @threadbooks. It is really worthwhile listening to what she has to say, and I think you will find her outlook very positive - I know I did.

This is definitely one of those timely books that really should be widely read, and it shines with the love of family and the power of stories passed down generation to generation - these are the things that stand the test of time, enduring through adversity, and it is in these words that Mona has found her own identity and sense of belonging.

Often you come across books you think are what you want to read..and then you come across those you need to read. This falls into the latter camp for me. As someone whose mother also moved to a foreign land to marry and raise a family, this hit me right in the feels. My mum does not come from somewhere like Palestine although it has faced its share of difficulties, too.

The way the mother/daughter dynamic is written can only be written by someone who is a daughter. I see so much of my own relationship with my mother in this. My need to take care of her, her stubbornness that she is independent and knows better.

By turns this book is warm, by turns it is truly heartwrenching but that is to be expected in a story about this subject matter.

Although the audio version fell flat for me, the reading version did not.

4.5 out of 5

Personal, illuminating, and sincere! I read this as an ebook and also listened to it as an audiobook and I would highly recommend, Mona describes her time in Palestine beautifully, but there is always a bit of tragedy there because of Israeli occupation. On one hand it is nice to read how excited and full of happiness she is to be there and teach, but on the other it’s sad because her home isn’t her own and she sees the destruction and displacement of her people and culture.

I think this is a good read especially if you’re from a western country like myself and have been fed a lot of propaganda about Israeli/Palestinian conflict!

An enlightening book which will offers a touching perspective.of what it feels like to immerse yourself in a vastly different context. The author clearly shows how this brings deeper understanding of the life experiences of someone you love. It is also an insight into what it is like for people living in a world where freedom is not a given.

Mona Hajjar Halaby's memoir In My Mother's Footsteps was this week's engrossment for me, reading-wise. I am so glad I had the opportunity to read this book! I knew it was about the middle east, but wasn't clear until I started in, that it was about Palestine, a topic of which I know very little beyond the bible study classes of the Christian world. The living breathing people / country / culture that are growing up right next to Israel, trying to keep hold of their part of that ages old argument of who gets what has never been something I considered much. Now I can't stop thinking about them.

Oddly enough, these last few years I've been reading a lot about displaced peoples - the native peoples of the Americas, the Irish in their own land, all of the people the Vikings imposed on, the conquered people who suffered for a time during WWII (and every war ever!) and this memoir fits right in that category. What about the Palestinians? Why does one neighborhood go to displaced people another country (Britain) assigns them, rather than the very people who live there and have lived there for hundreds - thousands - of years?

By telling us the tender story of her mother, ". . . born a Christian Palestinian in Jerusalem and grew up in British-governed Palestine until the war of 1948, when she was driven out of her home. . .", one of those actually displaced, a reader travels through the time and many local places of the Nakba. So many people forced to flee, and laws quickly passed to ensure they could never come back and reclaim so much as a bitter orange tree. I've always been inspired by the story of Israel being established, a final home for a displaced people. "Palestine" and its people occupied a shadowy place in my mind as a people who didn't want Jews there, and so were cranky and non-cooperative. That's the full extent of my knowledge (miniscule) and ignorance (vast) when it comes to Palestine and its people. This book opens a door to yet another displaced people who are doing their best to reconcile the past actions of others and still find a way to achieve the same kind of security and homeland as their neighbors.

On one of her tours throughout the country she observed:

At the head of the trail was a big map of the park with its trails and beaches. A short narrative in English, Hebrew and Arabic followed. The last paragraph caught my attention: "Certain plants that grow in the park, such as the dark-purple iris (Iris atropurpurea), are endemic to this area. Wildlife in the park includes fox, badger, porcupine, bee-eater, and songbirds." Palestinians were also once endemic to the region, but unlike the dark-purple iris, the fox, the badger, the porcupine, the bee-eater, and songbirds, they were not protected but uprooted and discarded.

Other takes-away for me from this book were Ms. Halaby's teachings for children related to conflict resolution, non-violent communication and problem solving within a classroom setting and how some of those could be applied on a larger scale. She was hired to go to Palestine and teach her specialty for a year, and she shared the experiences with children who had been raised by parents who were children during the 1948 traumatizing troubles - all of which rolled forward to their children as they parented. As I read, it was clear that children on all sides of the millenniums-long, ongoing argument benefited from her year there. Obviously a wise and helpful teacher, I find her a talented and skillful writer.

I highly recommend this book.

A Sincere Thanks to Mona Hajjar Halaby, Threadbooks and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review.
#InMyMothersFootsteps #NetGalley

I found Mona Haijar Halaby"s position to be extremely pro-Palestinian and, disturbingly, ANTI Israel, to the point that at times I considered DNF"ing this book.

I have always been intrigued, confused, upset and sad about the clashes and aftermath of all the disturbances that happen between Israel and Palestine. It hits you hard when you see kids dying in the shelling, people losing homes and near and dear ones. One of the clashes that happened in the recent times killed a mom and her 4 kids when I think were visiting their relatives. The youngest child was pulled from the rubble and when he was handed over to his dad. It was so clear from his interview that the reunion was bitter sweet for the dad. I was very sad and said a silent prayer for the family 😔. Hopefully the conditions improve.

This book was wonderfully reviewed by my friend Roshni and her recommendation came at the right time. I was yearning to know more about the history of the war and this seemed to be like a right starting point. The Author Mona Hannah Halaby as rightly says “Identity is where your heart lies” can be felt throughout the book. With a rich experience of life she has being in many different countries, you feel the love that she feels for her “motherland”. She has been pretty good at providing the dates and times of Nakba and also good historical background. This helps a newbie like me to understand the background better.

The whole book is her life experience when she was given a great opportunity to train the teachers at the RFS school in Ramallah. She goes on documenting everything about her life, her roots, her anger, fear everything from 2006 to 2008 when she was there. One of the best part of the book is her mother’s letters. It really added a great charm and importance to the subject. Couple of places in the book I felt the authors opinion or observation was little far fetched but hey, I am not going to judge her for that. It just showed her undying love for her identity.

All in all, I would say it’s a very good book ! I loved it. The organization of the content is very good too.

I am extremely thankful to Netgalley for providing me a ARC for this book

I really do enjoy reading me,lira because they allow me to learn about someone else’s life. Halaby’s family is rooted in Palestine and the. Middle East. Her story, which primarily focuses on her stays in Palestine, homes in on her mother’s past. She intersperses her visits with flashbacks of her mother’s story. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a contentious one. From reading Halaby’s perspective I learned more about her family’s situation that thousands of Palestinians endured. It’s a sobering history. The part I liked the best was when her mother got to visit Jerusalem and visit places that were so dear to her. Witnessing that, vicariously through reading it, was poignant.

A really interesting read that I would recommend to anyone wanting to find out more about the experiences and challenges refugees face every day. The author really captures her journey of discovering her heritage and recovering her mother's past. It is a book that you will not want to stop reading once you start.