By Noa Baum
On Tuesday,
March 14, meet author and storyteller Noa Baum as she opens this year’s Washington Jewish Literary Festival. Baum combines performance and text from her recent memoir A Land Twice Promised: An Israeli Woman’s Quest for Peace in an unforgettable experience. Click here for more info and a 20%
discount on the event.
Between December of 2014 and December of 2015, I dove into a
whole new world. I always knew that writing was different from storytelling but
I never imagined it would be so
different. When I write, it’s for speaking engagements, and the written words
are just the sketch—a scaffold upon which the story is created as I tell it.
When I tell stories about my mother, I don’t need many words
to describe her. I use my voice infused with her intonation, pitch, and volume;
my facial expressions, gestures and body language. And then the words she says
and her personality come alive. But when I sat down to write about my mother, I suddenly had to find words for everything.
How does one even begin to describe a voice so central to her entire personality!?
This was just one of the challenges during my most
fascinating journey of writing. It also included delving into old journals I
haven’t opened since high-school; resurrecting old conversation transcripts
with my Palestinian friend; and daring to have a conversation with my brother
that I never had before.
In my Author’s Note that opens the book, I write:
This book is my
attempt to shed light on how people experience and remember history. Not all
people, just me and one Palestinian woman I met in America and our families. It
is the story of our friendship and of my becoming a storyteller and using the
art of storytelling as a peace-building tool.
In an attempt to
explore the elusiveness of peace, I have gathered clues from memory’s secret
hideouts to create stories. I try to give shape to the subtle and mysterious
shifts in perception on my journey, from the secure black-and-white narratives
of my childhood to the uneasy place of complexity where multiple narratives,
ambiguities, and contradictions reside.
I also try to
reconstruct my creative process as a storytelling artist to reveal the
transformative power of my art form.
My hope is that this
exploration will encourage you to deepen and expand your listening to “the
other.” I hope it will inspire you to look at your own quest for peace and seek
out more stories and encounters with those you see as most different from you
or even as enemies.
I’m eager to share the fruits of this journey with you all—whether
you’ve seen the performance of A
Land Twice Promised or not—this
book will enrich your experience. It will add more background and details about
the lives of Israelis and Palestinians in this entrenched conflict, as well as
invite you behind the scenes into the creative process.
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