Overview

In Crossing the Line, journalist and writer Mya Guarnieri recounts the story of a real-life Romeo and Juliet: herself, a Jewish American immigrant to Israel lecturing at a Palestinian university, and Mohamed, a fellow journalist and the son of a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. This timely memoir chronicles how, despite the Israeli-built separation barrier that stood between them, Mya and Mohamed managed to meet, fall in love, and overcome the external and internal obstacles that threatened to keep them apart. With a reporter's eye for detail and a storyteller's knack for nuance, she shares the political, cultural, and family problems the star-crossed lovers faced throughout their courtship. Crossing the Line is not only a reflection on her own story, however; this compelling memoir also offers an intimate look at daily life in Palestinian areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank; it explores the complexity of loving one's ""enemy""; and it serves as a tortured love letter to the land and the people who call the place home. In a dark moment in the long history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Crossing the Line is a spot of light that imagines a different future for the two peoples. It is also a universal story about the challenges of overcoming our innermost emotional barriers and making ourselves vulnerable to love.

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9781684352425

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Reviews

""There are countless ways to talk about Israel and Palestine but few as moving and engrossing as this memoir. Crossing the Line is wonderful.""—Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ""This brave and beautifully rendered memoir—narrated at the sharp edge where the political meets the personal—reckons not only with a country's borders but with the shadow lines within the self. Guarnieri writes with the lyric precision of one who has learned to translate survival into song.""—Benjamin Balint, author of Kafka's Last Trial ""A remarkable story, beautifully told, which shows that love can transgress even the most brutal political divides.""—Peter Beinart, author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

Author Information

Mya Guarnieri is a writer and award-winning journalist who spent nearly a decade covering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Author of The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel's New Others, which was shortlisted for a Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, her reportage, commentary, essays, and short fiction have appeared in a wide variety of international publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, The Washington Post, Haaretz, Le Monde Diplomatique, Foreign Policy, Slate, Guernica, Narrative Magazine, and The Kenyon Review Online.

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