Author Laila El-Haddad ('Gaza Mom') Starts West-Coast Tour, Discusses Gaza and Egypt
Washington DC, February 9 --Laila El-Haddad, author of the recently published Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between, will start a two-week tour of California and Washington state, February 10. During the tour she will build on material in her book to discuss the effects that Israel's years-long siege on Gaza has had on the Strip's 1.5 million people-- and also, the role that Egypt's government has played until now in helping to maintain the siege.
El-Haddad has a B.A. from Duke University and a Master's in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School and has worked for several years as a journalist, researcher, blogger, and media activist. Gaza Mom is her first book. It is a lively chronicle of her life and times from 2004 through August 2010.
In many places in the book, El-Haddad describes occasions when she was trying to travel with her young children into Gaza, where her parents live-- or, trying to travel with the children out of Gaza to rejoin her husband, who works as a physician in the United States. Whichever way the little family was traveling, for many years now Egypt's restrictions have made their journey excruciatingly difficult and lengthy.
Sometimes, indeed, Cairo blocked them from traveling to Gaza altogether.
El-Haddad said this week that she hopes a new, more democratic government in Egypt will give greater support to Palestinian rights. "Cairo could really help Gaza's people reconnect to the outside world in all the ways we need to," she noted. "It could and should also do a lot to heal the political rifts in Palestinian ranks, that Mubarak's government was always until now working to deepen."
El-Haddad's tour will start with two events in Los Angeles on February 10. After a few days in Southern California and Santa Barbara she will travel to the Bay Area, where she has numerous events February 15-19. From February 20-23 she will be in the Seattle/Tacoma area of Washington. Her full schedule, which will have additional events added over the days ahead, can be found here.
While on the tour, El-Haddad will be cross-posting her blog posts both at her own longstanding "Gaza Mom" blog and at the special blog set up to support her west coast tour.
El-Haddad's book was published by the new Charlottesville, Virginia-based publisher Just World Books in November 2010 and has won several accolades since then. It retails at $24.95. (ISBN: 978-1-935982-00-5; 444 pages; paperback.) Copies can be purchased at all the events on the tour, and Ms. El-Haddad will be available to sign them.
Ms. El-Haddad's biography can be found here.
