Empowering Global Citizens

from these books and the discussions they are having about the ongoing

content of the course.

If the students do form groups, they might change groups every three to six
weeks, which would allow them to interact with as many peers as possible
in small groups and would facilitate the opportunity to confront and resolve
the differences in opinion likely to emerge (and thereby to practice one of
the themes of the semester, conflict resolution).

The teacher can choose books that match the particular region being stud—
ied at the moment or that will broaden the scope of the students’ knowledge
of different parts of the world, and the books should continue to draw out
the common themes of conflicts and resolutions. The following are a few

recommendations but others, of course, can be added:

1) Leon Uris’s Exodus (Israel/ Palestine)

2) Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Vietnam)

3) Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (Vietnam)

4) Ishmael Beah’s Long W31 Gone: Memoirs ofa Boy Soldier (Sierra Leone)

5) Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in jenz'n (Palestine/ Israel)
Starred Review. In this richly detailed, beautiful and resonant
novel examining the Palestinian and Jewish conflicts from the
mid—20th century to 2002, (originally published as The Sear of
David in 2006, and now republished after a new edit), Abulhawa
gives the terrible conflict a human face. The tale opens with
Amal staring down the barrel of a soldier’s gun—and moves
backward to present the history that preceded that moment.
In 1941 Palestine, Amal’s grandparents are living on an olive
farm in the village of Ein Hod. Their oldest son, Hasan, is best
friends with a refugee Jewish boy, Ari Perlstein as WWII rages
elsewhere. But in May 1948, the Jewish state of Israel is pro—
claimed, and Ein Hod, founded in 1189 CE, was cleared of its
Palestinian children. . .and the residents moved to Jenin refugee
camp, where Amal is born. Through her eyes we experience the

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