PRINTWriting your life
Local author Ibtisam Barakat shares her childhood refuge — words — by teaching others to tell their stories
Courtesy of Ibtisam Barakat
Ibtisam Barakat turned to language to help escape from a turbulent childhood. Now Barakat, who published a memoir in 2007, spreads her gift with Write Your Life seminars.
February 4, 2010 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Ibtisam Barakat has always found safety in language.
Since her childhood as a Palestinian refugee in the West Bank, she has looked to the Arabic alphabet for stability and companionship. Language provided a refuge when her world was blown apart after the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and neighboring states. Language, Barakat says in her 2007 memoir, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, helped her piece her life back together.
Courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
1. Conflict
Take a problem that you have, and write about it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t have that problem. What assumptions might they make about that problem?
2. Voice
Close your eyes, and think about a certain topic: money, education, food, politics, etc. Listen to yourself in silence. Whose voice do you hear speaking about that topic? Try to write with that voice.
3. Plot
What are the top three circumstances or events that have shaped who you are now?
4. Perspective
Describe yourself from your mother’s viewpoint — not what you would like her to say, but what she would actually say.
5. Imagination
Learning requires effort, and so does unlearning. If you could major in unlearning, what would the courses include?
Now the Columbia author is helping others piece together their lives with the power of language. Before writing Tasting the Sky, Barakat prepared a seminar to determine what tools people need to write their own memoirs. Following her book’s success, her Write Your Life seminars have taken her to schools and conferences all over the world. Workshop participants of all ages express themselves through nonfiction, poetry, drawing and movement. The workshops are powerful not only as a tool of expression and reflection but also as a decision-making tool. “You’re in a better position to make decisions after you’ve combed your life,” Barakat says.
Carol Buckels, a freelance grant writer in Columbia, participated in a Write Your Life workshop at Access Arts in 2006. She enrolled to move past self-consciousness in her creative writing. Each Write Your Life experience is tailored to the specific group, and Buckels believes her group’s exploratory writing exercises helped participants connect to one another and themselves. Since the workshop, she has stayed in close contact with other members and had a number of her poems published. “Ibtisam made the class such a safe place to explore what might be blocking creativity,” Buckels says. “She made it safe to be enthusiastic about writing again.”
Bringing underrepresented voices to the conversation is one of Barakat’s fundamental goals for her seminars. She believes an inclusive society is built on listening to the aspirations and struggles of those outside the dominant narrative. “Society has so many missing stories,” she says. “Life has more depth and enjoyment if more stories are invited in.”
Tapping into personal history through writing might initially seem difficult, but Barakat says, “The page is a good door between (the) inner and outer world.” Opening up on the page can also open doors between cultures and communities. Although Barakat’s particular story might seem unfamiliar to Westerners with little knowledge of Palestinian history, Tasting the Sky connects with international readers through its honest, poetic storytelling from a child’s perspective. Barakat cites the power of this kind of personal writing to “transcend cultures and languages and go to the one human language everyone understands — emotions.”
Barakat is now working on a collection of poems and a follow-up to Tasting the Sky that carries her story into adolescence. “The adolescent years are tumultuous in general, anywhere in the world — to negotiate that with living in an occupied territory means the struggles are interpreted not just through the stage itself but the place and the time,” she says. Most of us can relate to teenage uncertainty, even if we haven’t experienced a war-torn childhood. It’s a testament to the power of Barakat’s writing that people feel welcome to join the conversation.
Twitter
Facebook
