Pamela Olson speaks about her memoir Fast Times in Palestine. This event was sponsored by MonkeyWrench Books and Palestine Online Store. Olson, a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma, had what she always wanted: a physics degree from Stanford University. But instead of feeling excited for what came next, she felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistible memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate. With dizzying speed she found herself attending Yasser Arafat's funeral, sharing a holiday dinner with a suicide bomber's family, tour-guiding Israeli friends around the West Bank, dating a Palestinian from a conservative Muslim village, being held at gunpoint and injured by a stun grenade, and witnessing the 2005 Disengagement from inside the Gaza Strip. The gripping narrative focuses not only on violence, terror, and social and political upheavals but also on the daily rounds of house parties, concerts, barbecues, weddings, jokes, harvests, and romantic drama that happen in between. Funny, gorgeous, shocking, and galvanizing, Fast Times in Palestine challenges the way we think not only about the Middle East but about human nature and our place in the world. Produced for Austin Indymedia by Grace Alfar. A ZGraphix/Austin Indymedia production. http://zgraphix.org
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