The Holy Land in Transit

Steven Salaita's ambitious and thought-provoking work draws a comparison between the dynamics of settler colonialism in the United States in regard to Native Americans and Israel in regard to the Palestinians, revealing the way in which politics influences literary production. The author's nuanced analysis is not based on similarities between the two disparate settler regions, but rather on similarities between the rhetoric employed by early colonialists in North America and that employed by Zionist immigrants in Palestine. Meticulously examining histories, theories, and literary depictions of colonialism and inter-ethnic dialects, Salaita identifies the commonalities in the myths and rationales employed by both groups as well as the counter-discourse cultivated in the literature of resistance by native peoples. He complements his analysis with personal observations of Palestinians in Lebanese refuge camps, where he encountered a sympathetic perception of American Indians. The Holy Land in Transit presents one of the first intercommunal studies to assess the ways in which indigenous authors react comparably to analogous colonial dynamics. an emerging frame of reference for historical, political, literary, and cultural comparison.