The trip

Running is a state I live in always, in my childhood the energy of life in me was persistent and overflowing so I ran. And in my adolescence I ran out of fear of my growing body and the awaited harem. Then I kept running so I wouldn't lose my tenderness for the men of my generation, I run to learn, I run to be independent, and I run so my family wouldn't return me to their love pen and guardianship, and I run so society wouldn't put me in the pre-determined inferior category for women. And I kept running until running became a second nature to me. And so, since I arrived in America, I also found myself running to ward off alienation; and fulfilling multiple academic commitments; striving for quick achievement that would bring me back to Egypt. Radwa Ashour, in her journey to obtain her PhD in Afro-American literature from the University of Amherst in Boston, shares with us the details and memories of the journey, her observations, and her relationships with those around her in a new community she was not going to with neutrality — she did not know what was coming, nor was she like generations of emissaries who went and returned infatuated with the lights of imperialism. But she went with the awareness of a fighting Egyptian woman and wife of a Palestinian poet who believes in his cause.