On Monday, November 25, 2024, MORIA Literary Magazine, one of the only national literary magazines staffed fully by undergraduate students, held their biannual First Press Reading Series (FPRS) event virtually. The guest speaker was none other than the 2024 winner of the National Book Award for poetry, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian-American poet, essayist, and translator. As this FPRS was held virtually, University of Redlands faculty, staff, and students were invited to participate alongside the Woodbury community. Khalaf Tuffaha read poems from her award-winning book Something about Living which was followed by a Q&A. to watch a replay of the event.
Speakers for FPRS are also interviewed by a member of the MORIA staff for Athena, the student writing portion of the MORIA website. Production Editor of Issue 14, Neha Vignesh, had the privilege of interviewing Khalaf Tuffaha, and her article can be read below.
“Bridges of Verse: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha鈥檚 Journey Through Identity and Advocacy” by Neha Vignesh, final-year architecture student
In the world of contemporary literature, writing today is often about identity, advocacy and imagination.聽For , a cross-cultural and continental traveller, this crossroads is both a challenge and a calling.聽Taking inspiration from this rich tradition and a deep-seated personal experience of displacement, Khalaf Tuffaha鈥檚 narratives are committed to storytelling as a form of protest, reflection, and community.
Her love for writing began in childhood.聽Having a grandfather who was a poet and had a weekly column in the Jordanian daily newspaper, Khalaf Tuffaha grew up on summers spent immersed in books, concepts, and the stanzas of Arabic poetry.聽Her grandfather鈥檚 literary production as poet, columnist, playwright and translator had brought a home filled with intellectual and literary discovery:聽鈥�It was a home filled with poetry and books,鈥� she remembers, which 鈥�inspired her love for language and storytelling.鈥� It was this close exposure with literary world that gave birth to a childhood love for poetry and storytelling that created a passion for the transformative force of words.
This relationship to language grew as Khalaf Tuffaha found her way around the challenges of being a bilingual and bicultural person.聽Crossing between the Arab world and the United States, she found that language might be an open-ended mirror and bridge, as a way of showcasing cultural details and forming relations.聽Translation was now a fundamental element of her identity in the literal as well as the metaphorical realms.聽鈥�Translation is a negotiation,鈥� she says, 鈥�a way to bridge gaps and invite readers into multiple worlds.鈥� Her literature is a weaving of voices, a multi-vocal discussion of identity and belonging.
The recent recognition of her work by the , as the winner of speaks volumes about her craft and how deep she gets into challenging themes. Khalaf Tuffaha鈥檚 collection, (University of Akron Press, 2024) are poems about the Palestinian-American experience, a meditation on how identities exist and conflict, even dissolve one another.聽Putting together this list was a project of love and a reflection. 鈥�These poems,鈥� she notes, 鈥�were written over more than a decade, and bringing them together was like putting pieces of a puzzle in conversation.鈥� The result is a work that鈥檚 less about individuals and more about a collective understanding of displacement, resiliency, and search for a place called home.
For Khalaf Tuffaha, awards such as the National Book Award are significant.聽It is not just a personal achievement but a space to increase the voices of the marginalized that can then be heard more widely:聽鈥�It鈥檚 a chance to reach readers who might not otherwise encounter these stories,鈥� she says, so that Palestinian realities of displacement, contested identity, and perseverance can find their place in the literary world.
In fact, advocacy is at the heart of her writing.聽She writes from the experience of her Arab-American upbringing and those communities鈥� struggles.聽鈥�You cannot separate the personal from the political when you write about displacement and erasure,鈥� she says.聽Not only is she writing about her experience, but she鈥檚 also writing about action and demanding readers embrace the inevitable truth of what American imperialism has done.聽Advocacy is not just in the realm of her writing but also in the physical action of resistance 鈥� protests, demands, and the constant work of taking accountability for the power imbalance.
Being writer and activist comes with challenges.聽Khalaf Tuffaha accepts the hardship that comes with writing about issues that are politically-charged.聽鈥�Rejection is part of the process,鈥� she discloses.聽She draws on the work of other activists, such as African-American writer , and on the generations of Palestinian writers who have traversed the same ground 鈥� mixing art and activism in terms that are both intimately and universally felt.
Between the pressures of advocacy and imagination, Khalaf Tuffaha keeps expanding her creative realms.聽She is working on translation projects that bring additional Palestinian voices to light, a short novel, and another volume of poems.聽These opportunities offer recess and regeneration, a sign that art still matters even when it must acknowledge within it the disasters taking place in the world.
If you鈥檙e a budding author, Khalaf Tuffaha has wise words for you: resist the notion that art and activism are separate. 鈥�Both require a deep attentiveness to the world,鈥� she says, 鈥渁nd both are acts of care and deep love.鈥� Writing is like activism, a practice of being present, probing, and making connections in a world that is resistant to them. MORIA has had the wonderful opportunity to publish some of Khalaf Tuffaha鈥檚 poems in past issues, such as 鈥溾�� and 鈥溾�欌�� from Issue Three. 鈥淟ove Song鈥� ends with a line that might describe her life鈥檚 work, for her words are indeed 鈥�the sounds of a homeland circling its people.鈥�
In a culture where art and activism are often treated as opposing elements, Khalaf Tuffaha鈥檚 story gives us a sense of how they both can come from the same place and origins. She takes us to the heart and soul of this world, and she teaches us to listen and learn and act on it.