Women Unsilenced - Hope, Freedom, and Music in Palestine

Women Unsilenced: Hope, Freedom, and Music in Palestine explores how Palestinian women use music to express, protest, and celebrate their identities. Divided into two parts, the book is told through with contrasting narrative styles. In Part One, the author uses evocative autoethnography to illuminate their experiences of travelling through Palestine and meeting five women musicians, spanning three generations. In Part Two, the author uses narrative case studies to center the women's voices. They share harrowing accounts of daily life that chronicle the untold stories of women living under military occupation and patriarchal oppression. These living stories reveal the unwavering determination of three generations of women to regain their cultural identity, educate their youth and take their place among the peace-loving nations of the world. Their stories challenge dominant assumptions about Palestinians and women in the Middle East and disrupt assumptions that are rooted in settler-colonialist and imperialist narratives. The stories of these women are beacons of hope, celebrating the universal value of self-determination.
Offering an intimate look at the lives and identities of Palestinian women as celebrated through music, this is a useful resource for students and scholars across Music Education, Women and Gender Studies, and Political Science. It will also be of interest to those completing their own narrative research and the general reader wanting to learn more about Palestinian womens' everyday lives.

List of contents

PART ONE - The Place and the People
Part One Introduction
Chapter 1: Summer 1 - 2017

• Farah
• Nibal

Chapter 2: Summer 2 - 2018

• Amal
• Rima

Chapter 3: Summer 3 - 2019

• Reunion
• Huda

PART TWO - Daily Life
Part Two Introduction
Chapter 4 - Education
Chapter 5: "Min Wen?" (Where are you from?) + Who am I?
Chapter 6: Activism
Chapter 7: Dreams and Reality
Epilogue: Reunion

About the author

Sommer Helweh Forrester is Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Product details

• Authors: Sommer Helweh Forrester
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 17.03.2026
• EAN: 9781041069263
• ISBN: 978-1-041-06926-3
• No. of pages: 152
• Illustrations: schwarz-weiss Illustrationen, Raster,schwarz-weiss
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); Oral History, MUSIC / Instruction & Study / General, Sociology, History: theory & methods, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, MUSIC / Ethnomusicology, Middle East, Regional Studies, Regional / International studies, Gender studies: women, Gender studies: women and girls, Art music, orchestral and formal music, Research methods: general, History: theory and methods, Non-Western music: traditional & "classical", Research methods / methodology