No Place for Grief

"Westerners "know" Palestine through images of war and people in immediate distress. Yet this focus has as its consequence that other, less spectacular stories of daily distress are rarely told. Among those seldom noticed are the women behind the men who enagage in armed resistance against the military occupation: wives of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention and the widows of the martyrs. In Palestine, being related to a detainee serving a sentence for participation in resistance activities against Israel is a source of pride, and the wives of detainees are expected to sustain these relationships steadfastly, no matter the effects on the marriage or family. Most accounts in the media and in academic studies address the dramatic violence and direct affliction of the Palestinians. Lotte Buch Segal takes a different approach and offers a glimpse of the lives, and the contradictory emotions, of the families of both detainees and martyrs through an in-depth ethnographic investigation. No Place for Grief asks us to think about what it means to grieve when what is grieved for does not lend itself to a language of loss and mourning"--Jacket.