Join us at the Boulder Bookstore for a series of lectures on authors from around the world, presented by faculty from CU Boulder! In this lecture, Karim Mattar, Associate Professor of English, will discuss Mourid Barghouti. This talk introduces the themes of home and exile in Palestinian literature through the work of Palestinian poet and writer Mourid Barghouti (1944-2021). Focusing on Barghouti's memoirs I Saw Ramallah (1997) and I Was Born There, I Was Born Here (2009) in relation to the rich history of Palestinian life-writing, it demonstrates the valences of personal testimony in relaying the intimate, all-too-human dimensions of an experience of displacement that in the international arena is often reduced to abstract statistics, if recognized at all. In Barghouti's case, displacement is an experience of violent uprooting from family, community, culture, and homeland certainly, but also one that binds externally and internally displaced Palestinians to one another and that therefore constitutes a national consciousness. For Barghouti, displacement defines the meaning of home. The talk concludes with a reflection on the significance of Barghouti's account of Palestinian exile today, as Palestinians all over the world observe and seek to intervene in the genocide of their people at home.