The Guardian posted two more of Fida’s videos documenting the use of white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza. Fida has been interviewed on CNN, NBC, Democracy Now!, and her videos used in mainstream and alternative news media.

Our mission is simply to help Fida continue documenting the stories that she has access to, and getting them out. We’re asking for small donations. We hope they’ll add up to what we need to purchase more tapes for Fida, video equipment and a new computer. The electrical outages destroyed her hard drive.

Please consider making a small donation of $5 through Paypal here. For tax deductible donations of any amount, send checks made out to our fiscal sponsor “The Brecht Forum,” and mail to: Rachel’s Words, PO Box 1125, New York, NY 10276. We will send you confirmation of receipt.

Thanks again for your support.

Rachel’s Words

info[at]rachelswords.org
(Please mark any emails clearly in the subject line to help us sort
through the spam!)

March 16th will be the 6th anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. Fida says the six-year-olds in Rafah have never experienced anything as terrifying as what is happening now. We’ll provide background information below, and additional links with many different ways to support Gaza. Please act now - but don’t forget Gaza when the current crisis is over.

Donate through Paypal here. Tax deductible checks of any amount can be made out to our fiscal sponsor, “The Brecht Forum,” earmarked “Rachel’s Words” and mailed to Rachel’s Words, PO Box 1125, New York, NY 10276. We will send you confirmation of receipt.

Background:
Fida Qishta is a 23-year-old teacher and independent journalist who lives in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Fida knew Rachel Corrie. When Fida organized some women to be on call around the clock - to help salvage people’s belongings from their homes before demolition - she named the group “Rachel’s Way.” As the local ISM coordinator in Rafah, Fida continues the work that Rachel was engaged in.

Fida founded the Lifemakers Center, providing several hundred children with a place to learn and play in Rafah. Her greatest concern is the collective trauma of Gaza’s children. When she’s not at the Center, Fida documents events at the hospitals, schools, homes, fishing boats - and in her own neighborhood. Fida writes a blog from her home. Her previous house was demolished; for over a year her family lived in a rented room connected to a building outdoors, with no facilities. During this period she was invited by the Rachel Corrie Foundation on a U.S. speaking tour.

In the last year she formed “Gaza Eyes Open,” networking with other citizen and professional journalists, sharing skills, and bringing us news of daily life in Gaza. When we compiled a list of equipment to start the project, Fida added “chalk,” for the Lifemakers Center - there was no chalk in Gaza because of the siege.

Videos by Fida:
Bombing of pharmacy in Rafah, Gaza Strip - 28th December 2008
28 December, attack in Gaza Strip - bombings in Rafah continue
Israeli Navy attacks Gaza Fishermen and Internationals

Articles by Fida:
We love the sun. So we sat outside to see the F16s bombing Rafah
The Observer, January 11, 2009

Eyewitness: Fida Qishta on the Crisis in Gaza
The Guardian, January 3, 2009

Fida on Democracy Now!
December 29, 2008

Fida’s Blog:
http://sunshine208.blogspot.com

Sunday, March 16, 2008 is the fifth anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. We mark the day with grief as people in Gaza struggle to survive. The international siege has left them without basic needs such as fuel, electricity, and potable water, and the recent Israeli military invasion killed 120 people - over 70 civilians and children. (Read more here.)

For people planning events, The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has put together an excellent vigil guide. Also, Rachel’s emails from Gaza can be found, in many languages, on our website. We hope that the anniversary will be used as a day to commemorate Rachel Corrie and and keep Gaza in the news. We encourage people to continue reading Rachel’s emails in public gatherings large or small, on March 16th and beyond.

In the last 5 years, Rachel’s Corrie’s voice has broken through barriers to reach a widening audience. Craig and Cindy Corrie are in Haifa. On March 16 they will attend the opening performance of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie in Arabic at the Al-Midan Theatre. Friends from the Royal Court Theatre, which originally premiered the play, are joining them. After Haifa, the play will travel to Nazareth, Jaffa and Ramallah. The play, whose cancellation in New York launched our own initiative, is now being produced in theaters all over the U.S. and internationally.

This week W.W. Norton released Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie - a collection of Rachel’s prolific writing, from her poems and lists at an early age to her last email from Gaza. In their introduction to the book, the Corrie family says, “The world knows of Rachel from how she died. But we know her from how she lived. She was, first and foremost, a writer and an artist.” Rachel’s book is their gift to us.

Let Me Stand Alone can be purchased online here or from bookstores. If your local independent book store has not already stocked the book, you can encourage them to do so. Cindy and Craig Corrie will be on tour with the book in April. Below is a list of events planned for the national book tour, followed by a list of the many places around the world that My Name is Rachel Corrie has now performed.

Your efforts and support have helped make this possible. Thank you.

In Solidarity,

Rachel’s Words

www.RachelsWords.org

info@RachelsWords.org

LET ME STAND ALONE

BOOK TOUR:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Sat, April 5 @ 8PM KIng Middle School, Berkeley 510.848.6767

SEATTLE, WA

Monday April 7 @ 7:30 PM University Bookstore at Town Hall 206.634.3400

OLYMPIA, WA

Tuesday April 8 @ 7:00PM Orca Books

Wednesday April 9 @ 7:00PM Evergreen State College “Students Educating Students about the Middle East”

PORTLAND, OR

Thursday April 10 @ 7:30PM Powell’s at Hawthorne Bookstore 800.878.7323

WASHINGTON, DC

Monday April 14 @ 7PM Delaplaine Visual Arts and Education Center 301.698.0656

Tuesday April 15 @ 6PM Busboys & Poets 202.387.POET

NEW YORK, NY

Friday April 18 @ 6:30PM Cooper Union,  Wollman Auditorium 212.353.4165

IOWA CITY, IA

April 21 or 22 - Event Pending - Iowa Memorial Union Prairie Lights 

MINNEAPOLIS, MN

Thursday April 24 @ 7PM The Loft Library Center Micawber’s Book Store 612.215.2575

MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE

THEATER PRODUCTIONS TO DATE*

*Please send us any missing info!

A special note of thanks to all of you who staged your own readings and interpretations of Rachel’s Words.

We will post any upcoming Rachel’s Words events on out website - write us at info@rachelswords.org.

Royal Court Theatre, London, England

Premiered April 4, 2005 through April 30, 2005

Ran again October 11-29, 2005

Playhouse Theatre, London, England

March 29 - May 7, 2006

Minetta Lane Theatre, New York, New York

October 15 - December 17, 2006

Orpheum Theatre, Madison, Wisconsin

March 7, 8, 14, 15, 2007

Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle, Washington

March 15, 2007 - May 6, 2007

(With a weekend of performances at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa)

Contemporary American Theater Festival,  Shepherdstown, Virginia

July 6 - July 29, 2007

The Kitchen & Roundhouse Theatre, Silver Spring, Maryland

July 21, 2007

Synchronicity Performance Group, Atlanta, Georgia

September 7 - October 7, 2007

Countdown to Zero, Denver, Colorado

Denver: September 28 - November 17, 2007

Lincoln, Nebraska: January 25, 2008

Omaha, Nebraska: January 26, 2008

Des Moines, IA: January 27, 2008 (2 shows)

Albuquerque, New Mexico: February 16 & 17, 2008

Teatro La Plaza, Lima, Peru

Ran until 31st October 2007; plans to tour until summer ‘08

Van Duzer Theatre, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California

October 18-27, 2007

Fournos Theatre, Athens, Greece

Production opened on 12th October 2007

Nord Nederlands Toneel, Netherlands

Production opened 11th October 2007

Organic Theater Company,  Atlanta, Georgia

October 4 - November 4, 2007

Gothenberg City Theatre, Sweden

Production opened on 9th November 2007

Sage Theatre, Calgary, Canada

November 15-24, 2007

Stockholm City Theatre, Sweden

Production opened on 8th December 2007

Teesri Duniya Theatre, Montreal, Canada

December 2-22, 2007

Neworld Theatre, Vancouver, Canada

January 23 - February 9, 2008

Viterbo University Theatre Department, Lacrosse, Wisconsin

Jan 31- Feb 2, 2008

Theatre Yes, Edmonton, Alabama

March 28 - April 12, 2008

Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, Australia

Production opened 14th May 2008

Theatre Panik, Toronto, Canada

May 29 - June 22, 2008

Radio broadcast by Deutschlandradio, Germany

August 4, 2008

New Repertory Theatre, Watertown, Massachusetts

March 8-30, 2008

Subversive Theatre, Buffalo, New York

March 7-29, 2008

MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE
Compiled by Katherine Viner and Alan Rickman
Directed by Tim Klein
Starring Katie White as Rachel Corrie
For more info visit: www.subversivetheatre.org

What?
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is a one-woman play produced in collaboration between Subversive Theatre and the Buffalo United Artists’ Theatre.

Who?
This production is directed by Tim Klein and stars Subversive Theatre’s own Katie White as Rachel Corrie.

Where?
All shows are at the Main Street Cabaret at 672 Main Street (in the same building as Alleyway Theatre) in between Studio Arena and Shea’s.

When?
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm March 7-29. Doors open at 7:30pm.

How Much?
Tickets are $22.00 general admission or $15.00 for students and seniors. To make a reservation, call the Buffalo United Artists Theatre’s Box Office at 886-9239.

A Painfully True Story…
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is a one-woman play compiled entirely from the journal entries and e-mails of Rachel Corrie — the 23 year-old peace activist from Olympia, Washington who died after being run over by an Israeli Bulldozer while defending a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003.

Edited by British journalist Katherine Viner and actor Alan Rickman (who directed the play’s London debut), this play beautifully depicts Rachel Corrie’s breathtaking transformation from a young idealist into the determined activist who chose to risk everything for her beliefs. Inspiring, heartfelt, and unmistakably sincere, the words of Rachel Corrie should be heard by all!

Defying Censorship…
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE was at the center of a storm of controversy when it’s American debut was suddenly cancelled amidst objections to the play’s pro-Palestinian content. Since that time, productions in Miami and Toronto have also been abruptly cancelled. When the Contemporary American Theatre Festival performed the play last Summer, their main sponsor cut off $100,000 in funding!

All this is a sobering reminder that those with money and influence still think they can dictate what is or is not performed on the American Stage. Subversive Theatre is proud to stand up against this atmosphere of censorship and intimidation and bring you the play that many theatres do not have the courage to touch!

Subversation Saturdays…
As ever, we continue our tradition of “Subversation Saturdays.” Stick around after each Saturday’s performance and join with members of the cast and crew for an open discussion of the play you’ve just seen.

MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE touches on many sensitive topics and people will undoubtedly have much to say. “Subversation Saturdays” is your chance to find out what others are thinking and get your own two cents in as well!

Special Event…
On Saturday, March 8th, in observance of International Women’s Day, Elea Mihou, Executive Director of the Western New York Peace Center will join us for our weekly post-show discussion. We invite everyone to join us for this event and help keep the powerful tradition of International Women’s Day alive and kicking!

Find Out More…
For more information about Rachel Corrie, the play, and the controversy surrounding them both, please visit our website at www.subversivetheatre.org. See Rachel’s mother’s open letter to the Boston Globe, Rachel’s father’s interview on Democracy Now!, statements from the International Solidarity Movement and much, much more.

THE SUBVERSIVE THEATRE COLLECTIVE:
Where Dissent Takes Center Stage!

Louise France | The Observer, Sunday March 2 2008

Peace activist Rachel Corrie is shown at the Burning Man festival in a photo from September 2002, in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP

It is impossible to underestimate quite how much life for Rachel Corrie’s family has changed since she was killed by an Israeli army Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. As Rachel’s elder sister Sarah puts it: ‘What was normal doesn’t exist for us now.’

‘After Rachel was killed.’

When I meet the Corries, it swiftly becomes clear that there is a great deal they want to speak out about, but it is these four words, heavy with loss, that they have repeated most over the past five years.

Before Rachel was killed trying to prevent a Palestinian home in Rafah from being demolished, they were a pretty ordinary West Coast American family. It has been said in the past that she came from a left-leaning, alternative background, but this is not strictly accurate. Craig Corrie is an insurance executive, who has spent 24 years of his career working for the same firm. Cindy Corrie is a musician and teacher. Since the mid-Seventies they have mostly lived in the same slate-grey house in Olympia, a small town with many coffee shops an hour’s drive out of Seattle, and it was here that they raised their three children, Chris, Sarah and Rachel. True, the Corries liked to debate politics around the kitchen table. They also liked to talk about the cats and the chickens, going skiing at the weekend, the vegetable plot, the family holiday cottage in Minnesota. Whenever the conversation did turn towards the Palestinian issue, Craig and Cindy’s sympathies would instinctively fall on the Israeli side.

After Rachel was killed, life changed abruptly. Over the past five years they’ve had to deal with the loss of their youngest daughter, at the age of 23. Cindy, a quietly spoken woman not given to over-statement or, indeed, self-pity, describes a period of mourning that will never really end.

Rachel’s parents and sister have not returned to their jobs, although their schedule is relentless. Last week Craig and Cindy were in Vancouver. Next week they’re heading to Alabama. As part of their work for the Rachel Corrie Foundation, an organization they set up after their daughter died, to promote peace and justice in the Middle East, there are school talks and early-morning radio interviews about the human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, lobbying to have her death properly investigated and campaign meetings supporting their bid to fulfil Rachel’s ambition to establish a sister city project between Rafah and Olympia. Twice they have visited the contentious 40km by 10km strip of land where Rachel died. Before Rachel was killed, Cindy had never been to Europe, let alone the chaotic, squalid, potentially dangerous refugee camp that is Rafah.

The routine of day-to-day life has been cast aside. Their two-acre garden, from where you can see the creek where the children used to swim in the summer and the rushes in which they’d play hide-and-seek, has an elegiac, abandoned feel. They’re away so often the family cat now lives with Sarah. Even if Cindy had the time to cook dinner, she’d have nowhere to serve it up. Every surface of the house is smothered with paperwork.

Rachel had been a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent pro-Palestinian activist group. Within days of her death, the eloquent and vivid emails that she had sent from Gaza were published, with the consent of the Corries, in the Guardian. In 2005 they became the inspiration for an acclaimed play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, based on Rachel’s writing. Following two sell-out runs in London and a controversial last-minute cancellation in New York, the dramatic monologue, which follows Rachel’s life from messy teenage bedroom through to Palestinian refugee camp, has been performed across America and Canada. Later this month, on the fifth anniversary of Rachel’s death, it will be staged in Israel and the Corries will be there to watch the first performance in Arabic. This is a typically frenetic month. Next week sees the publication of Let Me Stand Alone, a collection of Rachel’s writing and drawings from the ages of 10 to 23, the final piece written four days before she was killed.

Craig and Cindy Corrie have become well known in Olympia. This modest middle-aged couple with silver hair and sensible waterproof anoraks - in the winter it rains so much in this part of the world that umbrellas are pointless - are stopped in the street. Teenage girls in skinny jeans hover, wanting to say hello to the parents of Rachel Corrie. Cindy, in particular, lights up, as though caught in the glow from a torch beam. I ask Sarah if her mother and father are often approached.

‘All the time,’ she says. ‘I’ve got used to it.’

‘In the first hour after Rachel was killed,’ Cindy recalls, ‘I remember saying: we have to get her words out.’

I’m sitting with Cindy and Sarah in one of Olympia’s oldest coffee shops, a place where the Corries used to come as a family when the children were growing up. One by one they piece together the events of 16 March 2003. It was a humdrum Sunday. Sarah, not long married to her husband, Kelly, was living in the family home while her parents were based temporarily in North Carolina, where Craig was working.

‘I caught the end of a message on the answer machine, someone saying, “I just heard the sad news,”‘ says Sarah, ‘and it dawned on me. It was something to do with Rachel.’ She found out her sister had died by reading the ticker tape along the bottom of the television screen: ‘Olympia woman killed in Gaza.’

‘My first thought was that maybe it wasn’t Rachel. My next was that Mom and Dad didn’t know. I started trying to dial and I remember looking at the handset and thinking, “I don’t know how to punch in the numbers.”‘

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Craig was doing the laundry when the phone rang. Cindy picked it up. It was her son-in-law, Kelly.

‘I could hear that there was something wrong in his voice,’ recalls Cindy. ‘I could hear Sarah crying hysterically in the background. She came onto the phone and said, “It’s Rachel.” And I said, “Is she dead?” I just knew I had to ask about the very worst possibility so that maybe that option would go away.’

While she took the phone to her husband, the news was confirmed on the television screen back in Olympia. ‘It says her name,’ Sarah told her mother. ‘It says her name.’

It would be days before they had a chance to mourn in private. First they flew to Washington DC to be with their son, Chris - ‘He was the only one who could function,’ recalls Craig - from where they began the logistical nightmare of organising the return of their daughter’s body. Craig was in such a hurry to pack he slung a pillowcase into his overnight bag mistaking it for a shirt. A journalist pitched up on their driveway in Olympia. There were more in Washington. A congressman suggested they hold a press conference. The death of an American citizen in Gaza was front page news - all this at a time when the atmosphere in America was already intense. The Iraq war would begin four days after Rachel was killed.

Craig recalls how, at one point, he picked up the telephone to learn that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was on the line. ‘He told me: “She is your daughter but she is also the daughter of all Palestinians. She is ours too now.”‘

‘If someone had told me 10 years ago that this was going to happen to us,’ says Cindy, ‘I’d never have predicted any of the things that we have done. I would have said, “You’re crazy. If anything happened to a child of mine I would not draw another breath.” But, amazingly, you do take the next step.’

For Cindy, as for the rest of the family, that next step seemed to be exploring the words Rachel had written. ‘Immediately I was drawn to the writing,’ she says. ‘Because the writing was what we had, and what we still have, of Rachel. Nobody was thinking of a book back then but, even early on, when we were in such searing pain, we were drawn to what Rachel had written. As a comfort, as a connection.’

Most of Rachel’s words had been kept in plastic tubs in the garage, or the attic. Journals, email printouts, poems, letters, assignments for creative writing classes, scraps written on paper napkins. Sarah, who has painstakingly edited the book over the past year, recites one of the first lines she read after Rachel died: ‘There is something that I’m supposed to do. I know there is something big that I am supposed to do. I just don’t know what it is yet.’

In the early pages of Let Me Stand Alone there is the sense of someone comfortable with the notion of revealing her inner world on the page: the style is uninhibited, experimental, confident. While it’s clear this is a dreamy little girl who likes to dance and to visit her grandmother, she also has an easy relationship with words. Her parents don’t describe themselves as writers but they remember their daughter sitting on the floor with pens and crayons before she went to nursery.

What emerges is someone who could be variously idealistic, knowing, self-deprecating, earnest, quirky, pretentious, fanciful, melodramatic, obsessive, flip and wise. Some of the pieces are uneven - whose private musings wouldn’t be? - but at its best Let Me Stand Alone is a window into the private preoccupations of a singular girl growing up in middle-class America in the Eighties and Nineties, a girl discovering her own lucid and original voice. Some of the passages, particularly her accounts of her intense love affair with a young man called Colin, are breathtakingly vivid and personal.

It is impossible to read about how Rachel lived without thinking about how she died. There are times when her words are chillingly prescient as she describes dreams about falling, fears of tumbling, being out of control. ‘Death smells like homemade apple sauce as it cooks on the stove. It is not the strangling sense of illness. It is not fear. It is freedom,’ she writes on 19 May 1993. Aged just 14.

Early on there is a surprising empathy for outsiders and I realise that in a media obsessed with the Paris Hiltons of this world, we don’t often get to hear about young, politicised American women. ‘Maybe,’ writes Rachel, aged 11, ‘if people stopped thinking of themselves, and started thinking of the other sides of things, people wouldn’t hurt each other.’ But there is a healthy streak of self-obsession too, and a wicked sense of humour. She grows up into a chain-smoking Pat Benatar fan. Some of the most poignant moments are Rachel’s ‘to do’ wish lists. A teenager who imagines there are years and years ahead of her.

A trip to a remote part of Russia as a teenager, just after the fall of Communism, is clearly a catalyst. So are stints staffing telephone crisis lines and volunteering for mental health organisations. ‘I know I scare you,’ she writes to her mother when she’s 19. ‘But being on a tightrope, with a safety net and a costume, doesn’t work for me… I have to do things that scare you. I’m sorry I scare you. I hope I’m not ugly in your eyes. But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll’s house, the flower world I grew up in?’

She is a student at Evergreen State College, a famously liberal university with a tradition of activism, when the two planes fly into the Twin Towers. Rachel Corrie, blonde, skinny, high cheek-boned, carelessly beautiful, is already looking beyond the claustrophobic confines of Olympia and into the world beyond.However, when it emerges that she is saving up to go to Gaza in order to volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) the rest of the family are dead against the idea. Her sister remembers the tension: ‘I didn’t want her to go. It was extremely stressful; I couldn’t talk to her about it.’

Her mother adds: ‘I think all of us hoped that Rachel would not quite get her act together to go.’

Her father: ‘I was concerned. Why not work in a soup kitchen or something like that, I said to her. But if that is what she really wanted to do, you can’t ask your child to do less.’ This quietly thoughtful man, a former Vietnam veteran who masks his sadness with a droll sense of humour, pauses. ‘I was concerned. But not really, really frightened. To be honest, it wasn’t until she got there that I got really, really frightened.’

The writing from Rafah, Gaza, steps up a gear. Her emails home are passionate, articulate and forensic. She’s been criticised for being naive about the dangers. I suspect many people, even seasoned war reporters, might admit to being blindsided by the situation on the ground in Gaza. She researched the region before she got there and attended an ISM training session, but the shock of being in the midst of chaos is immediately apparent. A day after arriving she’s helping someone move the body of a child. She describes a colleague with shrapnel in her shoes.

Gradually Rachel seems to adapt to this new level of anxiety. She makes friends with Palestinian families, looks after their children, learns bits of Arabic. Television footage of Rachel from this time shows her draped in the traditional black and white kaffiyeh, looking drawn. A tank rumbles by in the background. She sounds resolute: ‘I feel like I’m witnessing the systematic destruction of a people’s ability to survive,’ she tells the reporter. ‘It takes a while to get what’s happening here. Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realise there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I’m having dinner with.’

I wonder if the family understood that, along with other ISM volunteers, she was acting as a human shield - or ‘a bulldozer cowgirl’ as she puts it. Cindy says: ‘We knew what she was doing. We knew she was staying at different houses.’ Initially Craig believed that the worst that might happen was that she would be arrested. ‘But then when she started reporting back, I realised that this was a military out of control, where there was no discipline. I said to her brother a week before she was killed: “She can’t continue to do this sort of thing. Sooner or later it’s not going to work.”‘ Cindy adds, ‘You were just holding your breath.’

It sounds agonising for the family left behind. Sarah agrees. ‘You may not be talking about it every day, but you’re thinking about it. She knew that was what we would be doing. I don’t think it was an easy decision for her to be there knowing how worried we were going to be.’ Has Sarah ever been angry with her sister? ‘People ask that,’ she replies. ‘I never feel angry about Rachel because she didn’t intend to die. There was no part of her that intended to die. I can’t be mad at Rachel for something she didn’t intend to happen. So, no.’

This kind of bereavement, premature and violent, is hard to imagine. Now add the fact that Rachel swiftly became both a worldwide news story and a debating point and it’s difficult to comprehend the amount of stress the family must have been under. Within a few hours, Cindy’s email account had crashed. Absurdly, in the first hours of mourning they were trying to work out how to set up a new computer inbox. They received 10,000 emails in the first fortnight alone. In one of what must have been many dream-like moments, Craig recalls a candlelit vigil held three days after his daughter died: a stranger carried a huge poster-sized picture of Rachel, a photograph he hadn’t even seen before.

Overnight in Rafah there was graffiti dedicated to the young woman who believed there would be a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state in her lifetime - ‘Rachel was a US citizen with Palestinian blood.’ She had become a victim of their intifada, a heroine who had stood up to the mighty Israeli army. New mothers christened their daughters Rachel. A kindergarten was named after her. Palestinians living in America would approach the Corries crying, barely able to speak. ‘It should have been me,’ they told them.

Elsewhere the response was more mixed. The death of a young blonde female American in the Middle East aroused extreme reactions. Angry messages to pro-Israel websites suggested ’she should burn in hell for an eternity’. Critics of the Palestinian cause suggested that the houses in Rafah hid tunnels which supplied arms. A picture of Rachel burning a makeshift American flag in front of Gaza schoolchildren was circulated. There was heated debate on the campus at Evergreen. Sarah and her brother Chris began filtering out some of the hate mail that arrived.

‘I don’t think people understand how divisive this issue is, and how much people care,’ says Craig. ‘I don’t think we did.’

Rachel Corrie was both lionised and demonised. ‘In some ways,’ says Cindy, ‘both reactions are threatening. Because Rachel was a very human person. I used to worry about the adulation - what happens when they find out that the real person was as flawed as we all are? On the other hand, I know she has given a lot of people hope and something to aspire to. I think it is important to people to have figures in their lives that provide that for them.’

The Corries take me around Olympia in their car, past the places where Rachel grew up. While Craig drives he recalls descriptive passages from her journals and tries to retrace his daughter’s steps in his mind’s eye. Even on a winter’s day you can see how beautiful it is: noble Douglas firs, a glint of water, secluded wooden houses with verandas.

Two years ago some of the Nasrallah family visited Olympia. They were the owners of the concrete house, pockmarked with tank shell holes, that Rachel had died defending. The two families were invited on a speaking tour to talk about the situation in the Middle East. When Khaled Nasrallah saw where Rachel had grown up he turned to her parents and said, wide-eyed: ‘She gave up this paradise, for us?’

In turn, the Corries have twice visited Gaza since Rachel was killed. ‘My feeling,’ says Craig, ‘was that she wrote about those people with warmth. Going to Gaza was a real need to see who Rachel wrote about and to thank them for the care they took of her while she was there.’ They negotiated the same checkpoints, the same rubble-strewn streets as their daughter had done. Armed men in watchtowers looked down on them. At night they slept through the sound of tracer fire. I imagine how proud, and perhaps astonished, their daughter would have been (on occasion she’d railed against her father for having ‘his head in the sand’ politically). The Corries’ instinct is to play down the danger they were in: gunfire whistled past Craig and, one evening, dinner with the Nasrallah family was interrupted by the menacing sound of a bulldozer outside the window. On their second visit in 2006 they were woken in the middle of the night by men with Kalashnikovs. Craig and Cindy Corrie would be valuable bargaining tools in an area that has become even more desperate since Rachel was killed. As it was, the Nasrallahs managed to persuade the men to go on their way. It was said that they killed two security guards on the Egyptian border instead.

In one of her final emails home Rachel said, ‘This has to stop! I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop.’ It’s clear that her parents have taken her at her word. Sarah says, ‘She wanted them to go there. In her writing she says you need to meet these people. Now our lives are intertwined with what goes on in Rafah and Gaza and Israel and Palestine.’ Meanwhile, in the five years since Rachel was killed, the humanitarian situation in Gaza - effectively imprisoned by Israel, with limited fuel, electricity and medical supplies - has grown worse, not better.

The family is still seeking information about what happened to Rachel and to have her death accounted for. According to former US secretary of state Colin Powell’s chief of staff, the Israeli government’s report was not ‘thorough, credible or transparent’, yet there is no sign that the US government plans to take any further action. Four months ago Sarah discovered distressing reports that Rachel’s autopsy was not carried out according to their stipulations. The Corries, along with four Palestinian families, are waiting for court action against Caterpillar Inc, the American company that makes the bulldozer that killed Rachel, to be reheard.

Sarah recalls, three weeks after Rachel died, her mother meeting the family of Amy Biehl, an American anti-apartheid campaigner killed in South Africa in 1993. ‘I remember Mom asking Amy’s mother, “Do you ever get the normal back?” She paused for a long while and in the end she said, “No, not really.” I knew then that this is what was going to happen to our family. First you have to mourn Rachel. Then you have to mourn the loss of your family and the life that you had.’

In the last few months there have been performances of the play in Montreal, Vancouver, B.C., Edmonton and Calgary in Canada, and it is scheduled for Toronto later this spring. The Denver production has recently been in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, and in Des Moines, Iowa, and is this weekend (February 23/24 ‘08) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  

It has played in Lima, Athens, Stockholm and is headed to Germany, Spain, and more… there are plans for a performance in South Africa in 2009. The Corries will be stopping at performances in Madison, Wisconsin, and in Watertown, MA, on their way to Haifa. They have attended and done talkbacks, forums, etc. in Montreal, Vancouver, BC, and Des Moines, and did a taped phone message for Albuquerque.  (See review below.)

Actress embraces soul of the controversial Rachel Corrie

New York, NY, Dec. 10, 2007 – Oscar-winning actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Susan Sarandon has told a New York City activist group, Adalah-NY, that she is exploring Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev’s construction of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and exploitation of marginalized communities in other parts of the world. Sarandon was responding to a letter from Adalah-NY requesting that she boycott Leviev. According to The New York Post, Sarandon attended the November 13 gala opening of Leviev’s Madison Avenue jewelry boutique LEVIEV New York, as Adalah-NY protested Leviev’s illegal activities outside.

The November 20th letter to Ms. Sarandon requested that she “refrain from making any purchases from Leviev-owned businesses” and “join our campaign and add [her] prominent voice to the call for a boycott of Leviev’s products.” The letter was endorsed by a number of groups and individuals, including Jews against the Occupation-NYC, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee – New York Chapter, and representatives from the West Bank Palestinian villages of Jayyous and Bil’in, two communities that Leviev is destroying by building settlements on their land. Following discussions between representatives of Ms. Sarandon and Adalah-NY, Susan Sarandon’s Assistant Mark Edlitz responded in a December 7 email to Adalah-NY that, “We received the information you sent. Ms. Sarandon will do her own exploration on this topic before drawing any conclusions.”

Since LEVIEV New York’s opening, Adalah-NY has organized escalating protests and leafleting at the store. Sixty people attended the most recent protest on December 8, which featured a band and dabke, the traditional Palestinian folk dance. During the protest, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz made a purchase at LEVIEV New York, evidently signaling his public support for Leviev’s construction of illegal Israeli settlements. In stark contrast, Adalah-NY’s letter recognized that Sarandon is “known and appreciated for raising [her] voice and speaking out, time and time again, against human rights abuses” and respected “as an outspoken voice of conscience in a world where most remain silent.”

The letter explained that Leviev, “together with partner Shaya Boymelgreen, is building the Mattityahu East settlement on the lands of the Palestinian village of Bil’in. Mr. Leviev is also building the Zufim settlement on the lands of the village of Jayyous, and the strategic West Bank settlements of Har Homa and Maale Adumim around Jerusalem, which divide the West Bank in two, destroying any hopes for a future viable Palestinian state. All of these Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal under international law, as recognized by the International Court of Justice in 2004 and all major human rights organizations. In Bil’in and Jayyous, Leviev is building settlements on village land despite intensive nonviolent protest campaigns mounted by the two Palestinian villages.”

The letter further noted that Leviev carries out diamond mining in Angola in close partnership with the repressive Dos Santos regime, and that his US partner until this summer, Shaya Boymelgreen, “has developed such ill repute among New Yorkers that local housing and labor organizations started a campaign against his abusive land development and unfair employment practices.” Additionally, in October, Leviev was warned by the EU to stop all gem trade with Burma’s military junta or face prosecution.

Adalah-NY spokesperson Issa Mikel explained, “We greatly appreciate that Ms. Sarandon has taken the issue of human rights abuses in Palestine so seriously. Mr. Leviev’s human rights abuses and exploitation of communities from Palestine to Angola to Brooklyn are clear. As noted in our letter, we are confident that Ms. Sarandon was unaware of Leviev’s activities. We expect that once she verifies the facts, she will conclude that the only appropriate action is to sever her ties with Leviev. Many organizations and individuals have been asking us about Ms. Sarandon’s response, and we are pleased that she is closely studying the issue.”

For the full letter to Susan Sarandon see Adalah-NY’s website: www.mideastjustice.org

Sarandon at LEVIEV New York opening: http://www.nypost.com/seven/11172007/gossip/pagesix/her_best_friends_643816.htm
By Adalah-NY justiceme@gmail.com http://www.mideastjustice.org

She is described as “the most talked about playwright in America today” but because she had cast her dice in support of the Palestinians her play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, is the target of vicious attacks by pro-Israeli elements in the country.

Corrie did not actually write the play. She couldn’t because she was crushed to death in March 2003 while blocking a 60-tonne Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer that was planning to demolish a Palestinian home she was protecting in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

The bulldozer passed over her body twice and the Israeli authorities unabashedly claimed that her death was an “accident”. Her colleagues in the International Solidarity Movement witnessed the incident and were able to retrieve her badly damaged body. The State Department has said that the investigation was neither transparent nor credible.

British actor/director Alan Rickman and journalist Katherine Viner (of The Guardian) composed the 90-minute monologue from Corrie’s letters home, e-mails and journal entries while living in the Gaza Strip with a Palestinian family.

The play was a hit when it first opened in London two years ago. But when the New York Theatre Workshop “indefinitely postpon(ed)” its first American production last year, “presumably worried about a hot potato that might offend Jewish theatregoers because its title character is pro-Palestinian,” the action attracted national, if not international, attention.

Several prominent Jewish writers, including Harold Pinter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, said in a letter in The New York Times that they were “dismayed” by the theatre’s decision.

“We believe this is an important play, particularly, perhaps, for an American audience that too rarely has an opportunity to see and judge for itself the material it contends with.”

Although the play appeared later at another New York theatre, it still encountered strident Jewish opposition elsewhere including Miami and Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and in Toronto, Canada as well.

What has also upset Jewish audiences has been the fact that Corrie’s experiences in Palestine reminded people of Anne Frank - sometimes she has been described as the Palestinian “Anne Frank” - a German-Jewish teenager who went into hiding during the Second World War with her family in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam.

Her diary covering those 25 months before her death in a concentration camp was first published in 1947 and has been translated into 67 languages.

Since the play has yet to come to Washington, D.C., my wife and I along with two other couples had to drive nearly two hours to Shepherdstown to see the play at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival held on the campus of Shepherd University.

Split over

Here, too, it turned out that the Jewish director of the festival, H. Alan Young, attempted to disrupt the festival in protest over the Corrie play. The 27-member board was so split over the play that they had to hire a mediator. But at the end of their meeting, the board, with one dissent, decided to go ahead with the play.

Despite all these futile interruptions, the play has recently finished a successful run at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Corrie’s home state. And the July 6-29 festival in Shepherdstown was equally very well attended.

Many in the audience were teary eyed and the actress, Anne Marie Nest, could not be better especially when she recited Corrie’s heart-breaking lines:

“If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled and lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment, with no means of economic survival and our houses demolished; if they came and destroyed all the greenhouses that we’d been cultivating for the last however long do you not think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best (as) they could?”

Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, joined by four Palestinian families, are suing the Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, which manufactured the bulldozer, for aiding and abetting human rights violations - the destruction of civilian homes. The case is under appeal a present.

In an interview, Craig Corrie said the play has been translated into several languages but not Arabic. They are also about to complete their book about their 23-year-old daughter, which will be published Norton’s sometime in February.

The least Arabs could do in gratitude for this wonderful family and their amazing daughter, who tragically lost her life in Gaza, is to have an Arabic translation of the upcoming book and the play that is beginning to rock the theatre world in the US and support the Rachel Corrie Foundation as well.

George Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com.

A new play about the life of a young woman run down by Israeli forces in Gaza may be politically controversial, but it speaks to cross-cultural human truths that deserve an audience.

Maybe you’ve heard something about the play, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.” You probably haven’t seen it; few people have. But you know it’s controversial, that it’s not balanced, that it’s too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and doesn’t fairly present the Israeli side.

That’s all true, and it was enough to get a scheduled production in New York City canceled. But the play is also a remarkable piece of art, and it’s not meant to be balanced. It’s based solely on the writings, journals and e-mails of a young woman volunteering for a peace organization who was run over by a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Defense Forces in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003.

Originally staged in Britain, the play opened in Shepherdstown, W.Va., in July amidst much consternation over how it would be received. The Contemporary Theater Arts Festival housed at Shepherd University is the brainchild of producer-director Ed Herendeen, and he stood his ground in the face of the uproar. One board member resigned, but fears that the controversy would hurt ticket sales proved unfounded. The festival is having its best year yet fulfilling its goal of producing edgy and original theater pieces. Rachel Corrie’s parents were there the weekend I saw the play. Talking with them made the experience especially meaningful.

Craig and Cindy Corrie were living in North Carolina when Rachel, their third child, announced she wanted to go to Gaza. Her mother’s first reaction was to search the Internet for a similar stressed place in the world, like India, that might attract their idealistic daughter without posing as much danger. Rachel, fresh out of college and living in Washington State, had gotten caught up in the peace movement in Seattle, where she signed up with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization set up to support Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the Israeli military occupation. The Corries had never thought deeply about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and their sympathies, like most Americans, tended toward the Israeli side. They worried about their daughter’s safety. But she was a 24-year-old woman living in another state, and this was her decision to make, not theirs.

“My Name Is Rachel Corrie” is drawn from the prolific musings of this young woman from the time she was 10 years old and won an essay contest calling for an end to world hunger. It is not meant to solve the Middle East crisis. Critics of the play say the ISM is a terrorist front group and that Rachel had been used as a human shield. Rachel’s naiveté is the one element everybody agrees on. “I’m kind of new talking about the Middle East Palestinian crisis,” she e-mailed her parents. “I don’t always know the political implications of my work.” Rachel was crushed to death as she stood trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes thought to be complicit in tunneling terrorists into Israel. Her family learned of her death when their older daughter, Sarah, saw it on a crawl across the television screen. They were disbelieving at first; then they spent months that turned into years learning everything they could about how and why their daughter died, and the cause that had stolen her away from them.

The play that honors Rachel’s life is really about letting go: loving, protective parents learning to let go of their child, and a determined, dreamy child learning to let go of her parents. “I’m sorry I scare you,” Rachel e-mailed her parents from Gaza. “But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll’s house, the flower-world I grew up in?” The power of the play is in Rachel’s words, and in her journey. As a child, she had a long list of things she would be when she grew up, including the first woman president. And when adults would ask what she wanted to be, she would declare, “I AM a poet.” She remembers how her mother would walk her down the hill to school, and sometimes they’d play hooky together, going to the bookstore and to lunch. “My mother would never admit it, but she wanted me exactly how I turned out—scattered and deviant and too loud,” Rachel writes in her journal. Her father is shy about expressing emotions to his headstrong daughter. He e-mails less often than she’d like, relying on his wife to convey family news, saying he’s proud of her but wishes he could be proud of somebody else’s daughter.

After the production, theatergoers assembled on the campus lawn for a “Peace Café.” One man had bought the script to read but refused to see the play because he didn’t want to be manipulated by the emotion. An ad in the theater program reminds patrons of “The Other Rachels” who died at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. The Corries have met with Israelis who’ve lost a child to Hamas suicide bombers. Grief crosses all boundaries, and so should theater. “My name is Rachel Corrie” is a welcome start.

On March 16, 2003, a bulldozer powered by the Israeli Defense Forces on the Gaza Strip lowered its blades and rumbled into motion — and a young American protester named Rachel Corrie was crushed to death.

Four years later, the ground still has yet to settle back into place.

At least, that’s true metaphorically, if not literally. Consider the reaction when the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va., announced that one of four productions for its 2007 season would be My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a one-actor play based on the tragedy.

Within 48 hours of the announcement last December, H. Alan Young, a retired attorney and festival director, and his wife withdrew their pledge of $100,000 for the festival’s building campaign, Ed Herendeen, the festival’s artistic director says. Organizers anticipate that the programming decision will cost an additional $20,000 to $50,000 in lost box-office revenues.

Initially, the 27-member board was so split on the wisdom of mounting such a divisive show that the festival hired a mediator. At the end of a session in mid-February, the board, with one dissent, decided to move forward with the production.

In the months that followed, Herendeen received more than 100 letters and e-mails, some many pages long. Many of his correspondents passionately opposed the play’s inclusion in the four-week festival.

“This play was hijacked long before it ever got to me,” Herendeen says. “It was co-opted by both sides and used for their own purposes. I think if people actually see the play, they’ll be surprised it’s controversial. It’s really a small, lovely, personal story about one young woman’s journey.”

Corrie’s death at age 23 caused an international furor, primarily because accounts of the circumstances leading up to her killing are diametrically opposed.

A report by the Israeli government concluded that the bulldozer was searching for underground tunnels used in terrorist attacks. The government argues that the driver’s view was obstructed and he couldn’t see Corrie. The activist died, the report concludes, when she fell from a mound of dirt created by the bulldozer, and the mammoth machine piled debris atop her body. The government calls the death an accident.

But members of the International Solidarity Movement, of which Corrie was a member, say they were in the area to prevent the destruction of a home owned by a Palestinian pharmacist. They claim that an armored bulldozer deliberately ran over the helpless young woman twice, and they call her death a murder.

Two of the most outspoken proponents of the murder claim, actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner, excerpted Corrie’s diaries and e-mails home and crafted them into a theatrical piece that expresses the young woman’s sympathy for Palestinians and anger about the Israeli military presence on the Gaza Strip.

Surprisingly, My Name Is Rachel Corrie elicited little controversy when it debuted in London in 2005. Its reception in the U.S., though, was far different.

A planned run at the New York Theatre Workshop was put on hold amid opposition from that city’s large and influential Jewish community. The show finally opened off-Broadway in October at the 400-seat Minetta Lane Theatre, where it ran for two months.

Subsequent productions that had been scheduled for Toronto and Miami also were shelved after a barrage of complaints — though My Name Is Rachel Corrie recently finished a successful run at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Corrie’s home state.

Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, plans to be in the Shepherdstown audience on the show’s opening night.

“We think it’s wonderful that the Shepherdstown group held firm and is doing the play,” she says.

“I think the controversy has less to do with the play itself and more to do with the climate in this country about these issues. The play has become a lightning rod about all the strong feelings people have about what’s happening in the Middle East and our country’s role in it. But this is a discussion that needs to happen.”

Cindy Corrie and her husband, Craig, estimate that they have attended more than two dozen performances in England and the U.S. Seeing the play is a way to remain close to their beloved daughter.

“From the time Rachel was a tiny child, we enjoyed the gift of words that she had,” Cindy Corrie says. “She was able to look at the world and to express what she perceived in a way that was very unique to her. She was an artist. So for us, to hear Rachel’s words over and over again continues to be a gift.”

But, as the Corries would be the first to acknowledge, no family has a monopoly on pain.

Some of the play’s opponents in the Jewish community lost loved ones in the death camps. Others have contended with acts of anti-Semitism.

Husband and wife Richard A. Belle and Marie Pogozelski of Bethesda supported the Shepherdstown festival enthusiastically for a decade. In the past, they have marked the date of each coming festival on their calendar 51 weeks in advance. They have proselytized to friends and neighbors and made unsolicited financial contributions. They even confronted theater critics whose reviews they thought did an injustice to the Shepherdstown productions.

No more.

On Feb. 17, the couple wrote Herendeen, imploring him to withdraw Rachel Corrie from the festival lineup.

“Whether you agree to cancel the play or not, you have the moral obligation to look around and see the effect of this hate-mongering play,” they wrote.

“You will see it on the Web sites. You might see it on a swastika-smeared synagogue in West Virginia or perhaps on an attack on a Jewish student on the Shepherd University campus itself. This will be part of the legacy of you producing a play that explicitly endorses hatred of the Jews. Oops, Israelis. (You and I make that distinction; most purveyors of this slime do not.)”

Young, who resigned from the festival’s board of directors, finds Rachel Corrie’s interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be prejudicial and deeply inaccurate.

He also objects to the inclusion of a play that he believes violates the festival’s mission to stage new works by American playwrights. (In his opinion, Viner and Rickman, both Britons, and not Corrie, are the play’s authors.)

“Unless Rachel Corrie had supernatural powers,” Young says, “she could not have written the account of her death with which the play ends. The account of her demise was written by another Englishman who was a colleague of Corrie’s, so that account is suspect.”

Those are some of the reasons Young resigned from the board. He also weighed other factors before making his decision: He believed the board was breaching its fiduciary duties to safeguard the festival’s financial well-being. In addition, he says the play can’t be considered “contemporary” because the situation on which it is based no longer exists. Israeli civilians and military forces have since left the Gaza Strip.

“The board should absolutely have superseded the producing director if they knew that putting on a particular play could have a detrimental impact on the festival’s financial outcome,” he says.

Young says he welcomes controversial and thought-provoking plays, “no matter what the subject matter. But I object when the plays are so offensive as to cause loss of significant funds. I also would expect them to present more than one point of view.”

Of course, not all Jews object to the show, and not everyone who dislikes the script dislikes it on principle.

“I’ve really stood by the producers,” says Ari Roth, artistic director of Theatre J, which is in residence at the Jewish Community Center in Washington. “They have every right to do this play.”

Roth spoke out this year at a town hall meeting in New York that he attended with other performing arts professionals, including Irene Lewis, artistic director of Center Stage; Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones; and JoAnne Akalitis, the avant-garde New York director and writer.

Roth even considered mounting a production of Rachel Corrie at Theatre J but ultimately decided against it for artistic reasons.

“It’s poignant, to be sure, but it’s not well-argued as a play,” he says. “When you look at it aesthetically, there are many not-so-great artistic decisions. It’s a legitimate subject for a drama, and it asks questions that should be asked. But ultimately, it’s somewhat boring and somewhat biased.”

Herendeen said he can’t help but be impressed by the deep emotions the play has stirred weeks and months before the first scheduled performance.

“It was really moving to hear the depth of the passion expressed by my own, very generous trustees,” he says. “It was really moving to read all those eloquent e-mails and letters.

“But, isn’t this the response we seek from a work of art? In this world, we’re constantly divided. This play creates an opportunity for us to talk to one another.”

The 17th annual Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va., has a full slate of offerings in its four-week run.

In addition to four new works, there will be Under the Tent Lectures every Saturday afternoon on topics raised by the plays; a Peace Cafe, and actors’ labs in which non-Equity performers are showcased.

The festival is open Tuesdays through Sundays through July 29.

Tickets cost $30-$36 per performance; $26 for seniors and students. Subscriptions cost $100-$120; $81 for students and seniors.

Call 800-999-2283 or visit catf.org.

Here are the four mainstage productions:

• My Name Is Rachel Corrie. See accompanying article.

• 1001 by Jason Grote. This updating of the story of Scheherazade shuttles (via magic carpet, of course) from ancient Persia, where a new bride desperately weaves tales to bewitch a bloodthirsty king, to a modern love story set in Manhattan and on the Gaza Strip.

• The Pursuit of Happiness by Richard Dresser. This is the second part of Dresser’s Happiness trilogy, which examines the pervasive sense of unease underlying the American dream. An upper-middle-class family is thrown into turmoil when the brilliant teenage daughter decides not to go to college.

• Lonesome Hollow by Lee Blessing. In the future, the government has amassed extraordinary powers over private citizens. Lonesome Hollow, a penal colony for sex offenders, contains both a brutal pedophile and an artist punished for taking nude photographs.