Writing skills and writing

1 You are going to write a short biography. Read the notes on the life of Edward Said. Then discuss the questions below in pairs or small groups.

1. What will you need to add to make the notes into complete sentences?
2. Which details in the notes could you either leave out or put together as a more general statement?
3. Remember the work you did on sentence structure in Unit 1. How will this help you to write your biography?
4. How will you organise your writing? How many paragraphs will you need?
5. Can you add a closing sentence based on what you read in Period 4, or on your own knowledge and ideas?

2 Make notes based on your discussion. Then write the short biography.

Edward Said

Born: ⁦1 November⁩ ⁦1935 in⁩ Jerusalem

Died: ⁦25 September⁩ ⁦2003 in⁩ New York (aged 67)

Early education: Jerusalem and Cairo (family moved there 1947); later Massachusetts, USA

Native language: Arabic but spoke only English at school. (‘I have never known which was my first language.’)

Higher education: Bachelor’s degree from Princeton (1957), Master’s degree (1960) and Doctor of Philosophy degree (1964), in English Literature, from Harvard

Academic career: joined US Columbia University Department of English (1963) and taught there until 2003 (became professor 1991); Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard College (1974); also worked at Stanford University (1975–76) and Yale University

Writing: first book (1966) about English novelist Joseph Conrad; wrote many books on a wide range of subjects; most famous works Orientalism (1978), Culture and Imperialism (1993)

Music: excellent pianist and lover of European classical music from early age; worked as music critic for The Nation magazine and wrote four books about music; founded West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim, also established Barenboim–Said Foundation in Spain

Palestine activism: from ⁦1967 argued⁩ strongly against view of Palestinian cause in Western media in many books, articles and lectures; member of Palestinian National Council (PNC) 1967–99; made In Search of Palestine (1998), documentary film for BBC in which he returned to Palestine with his son to confront ‘Israeli injustice’

Awards: many academic and literary awards, including three for autobiography Out of Place (1999)

1 Discuss the questions in pairs or small groups.

Imagine (if necessary) that you come from a family that used to live in one of the villages depopulated and/or destroyed by the Israelis in 1948.

1. Where was the village?
2. What kind of place was it?
3. What was life there like before 1948?
4. Where did your family go when they were forced to leave?
5. What was their life like in the new place?

2 Write a short first person autobiography, based on the ideas from your discussion in Activity 1.

• Include details of life before the Nakba, either from imagination or from what your family has told you.
• Describe the leaving and where the family went.
• Say what effect the Nakba had on you and your family.
• Add a conclusion about how people kept the memory alive and their hope for a Right of Return.

My parents have passed down the memory of our village before the ⁦1948 Nakba⁩. It was

In this Unit you have learnt about:

• different views of history
• the Palestinian Nakba and Diaspora
• the work of President Yassir Arafat and Palestinian intellectuals
• non-literal or figurative language
• writing short biographies