Speak, Bird, Speak Again

Speak, Bird, Speak Again: A book of Palestinian folk tales is a book first published in English in 1989 by Palestinian authors Ibrahim Muhawi and professor of sociology and anthropology at Bir Zeit University Sharif Kanaana [ar].

After the original English book of 1989, a French version, published by UNESCO, followed in 1997, and an Arabic one in Lebanon in 2001.

The book contains a collection of 45 Palestinian folk tales, including Palestinian hikaye, drawn from a collection of two hundred tales narrated by women from different areas of the region of Palestine (the Galilee, the West Bank, and Gaza).

Some of the folk tales from Speak, Bird, Speak Again have been used in other collections/books: In 2007, the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority (PA) banned the book and issued a directive to pull Professor Kanaana's book from school libraries and destroy it, however, the ban was later lifted.

"[1][2][3][4][5] The Palestinian novelist Zakaria Mohammed warned that Hamas' decision to ban the book, which is a collection of 45 folk tales, was "only the beginning" and he urged intellectuals to take action.