Nefissa Naguib. Women, Water and Memory: Recasting Lives in Palestine.

• Position: Book review

Nefissa Naguib. Women, Water and Memory: Recasting Lives in Palestine. Boston, MA: Brill, 2009. 173 pages. Paper $87.00.

Women, Water and Memory is about the life of Palestinian women before and after piped water end of the Ottoman Empire until the Palestinian Uprising. Naguib accentuates that this book is not only about memories of old Palestinian women fetching and managing household water but also them being women, their strength and beauty, their wedding tales, birth, shared despair when a member of the family goes to Israeli prisons. The biographies of eight women fetching water when they were young were about placing activity at the centre of understanding cultural reproduction. This shows water's extraordinary ability to historize and regulate social relations.

Before piped water in 1985 in Muhsarafah, a West Bank village, water springs were a physical place were women spent much time, a place to look for a bride, gossip, and network. Women make up most of the village population. It is also considered a red village as many of its youngsters studied in former USSR. In chapter one Naguib describes the village as people know it. The second chapter focuses on the Palestinian cause early 1920 and in response to British Mandate and Jewish project. Chapter three focuses on women's stories. Chapter four and five highlight how stories can represent broader social and...