From Slumber to Awakening Culture and Identity of Arab Israeli Literati

From Slumber to Awakening argues that when investigating the cultural and historical predicament of segments of any society a close examination of the literal expression of the people is necessary to understand their human condition better. To accomplish this, the individual psyches of authors and poets must be delved into, and in this case was accessed through personal interviews. This study approaches the unique social position of the Arab Israelis through an exploration of culture and history. The examination of the literature itself begins with Israeli literature from the broad perspectives of both the prose and poetry forms and then moving into the literature and literati themselves one by one exploring the lives of the writers while superimposing their human experiences with the expressions and stories of their creative works. This examination, along with the interviews, defines the Arab Israeli minority as a group while also comparing them to Jewish Israeli writers who are close to the Arab Israeli situation.