Part commemoration, part celebration, Rachel Corrie’s book release gathering at Cooper Union’s Wollman Auditorium on Friday night was a testament to a wonderful person taken from this earth too soon.
Rachel’s collection of poems, LET ME STAND ALONE, recently published by Norton, meticulously selected with loving care by her family and passionate editor, reveal a girl, in her childhood writings, and woman, in her latter work, who had a striking awareness of the world.
Her writings reveal a person deeply concerned with other peoples’ right to dignity, peace and justice and an acute ability to acknowledge their suffering. Her childhood poems display an impressive wisdom that few people ever obtain regardless of age and an almost comical obsession with Moscow’s corroded water pipes.
Rachel not only exhibited compassion in her writing, she showed in with action. From her time working for a local nature conservancy, to the community hospital where she worked with the mentally handicapped to her final destination, Palestine.
In March 2003, Rachel Corrie was killed in Rafah, a village in the Gaza Strip as she attempted to stop a family’s home from demolition by the Israeli Defense Force. Standing on a mound of dirt, face to face with the driver of a Catepillar Bulldozer, Rachel was crushed as the machine continued to move foward.
SInce losing their daughter in a horrific and heartbreaking manner, Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy have taken up their daughter’s fight, having found, post humorously, a noble cause in the struggle for justice in Palestine.
Craig and CIndy, joined by notable friends such as actress Lily Taylor and Najla Said, the late Edward Said’s daughter and founding member of Nibrasan Arab-American theater company, took turns reading from Rachel’s poems.
This evening with the Corrie family and their friends was one of the most touching and emotional events I have ever attended.
For more information about Rachel Corrie and how you can carry on her fight, please visit The Rachel Corrie Foundation website.
For further reading about Gaza and The West Bank, I encourage you to read the works of Israeli Journalist Amira Hass, DRINKING THE SEA AT GAZA: Days and Nights in a Land Under Seige and REPORTING FROM RAMALLAH: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land.
