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In:Geopolitics and Activism in Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Edited by Giuliana Fenech and Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 18] 2026
► pp. 80–91

Chapter 5
Questions of identity and belonging in Palestinian children’s literature

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This chapter assesses the ways in which Palestinian children’s literature has represented and promoted identity and belonging in a context in which national rights remain unrealized and both children and those who write for them face displacement, migration, and occupation, with all the resultant privations. Within this context, identity takes on multinational and transnational dimensions while simultaneously reflecting domestic experience in which national rights and sovereign powers remain painfully abstract. Palestinian children’s literature has evolved over time, most notably since the establishment of Israel in 1949, with the experiences of those within Israel, those in the West Bank and Gaza, and those scattered across the Arab world and beyond, leading to some shared but also increasingly diverse themes in literature for the young. Palestinian children’s literature writers have tried to reflect trauma but also (re)affirm unifying values, drawing on folklore and the past, on notions of “land” and “homeland”, and on steadfastness when historical forces have splintered Palestinians’ sense of belonging in Israel, in the Occupied Territories, and in the diaspora.
Article outline
  • The increasing complexity of representing identity to Palestinian children
  • Palestinian children’s literature in Israel
  • Palestinian children’s literature in the occupied territories
  • Palestinian children’s literature in the Diaspora
  • Homeland in Palestinian children’s stories
  • Conclusion
  • References
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