# Event Details - **Event Name**: The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza - **Event Start and End Date**: Thu, 22 May, 2025 at 07:00 pm – Thu, 22 May, 2025 at 08:30 pm - **Event Description**: Sarah Aziza’s searing, genre-bending memoir traces three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to the Midwest to NYC—and backAbout this EventWe are honored to host Sarah Aziza for an event celebrating The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders. For this event, Sarah will be joined in conversation by Eman Abdelhadi.Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Masks are required for our in-person events.A brush with death. An ancestral haunting. A century of family secrets. Sarah Aziza’s searing, genre-bending memoir traces three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to the Midwest to New York City—and back“You were dead, Sarah, you were dead.” In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza’s crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begin in the hospital cafeteria, when a mysterious incident summons the familiar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother.In the months following, as she responds to a series of ghostly dreams, Aziza unearths family secrets that reveal the ways her own trauma and anorexia echo generations of violent Palestinian displacement and erasure—and how her fight to recover builds on a century of defiant survival and love. As she moves towards this legacy, Aziza learns to resist the forces of colonization, denial, and patriarchy both within and outside her.Weaving timelines, languages, geographies, and genres, The Hollow Half probes the contradictions and contingencies that create “nation” and “history.” Blazing with honesty, urgency, and poetry, this stunning debut memoir is a fearless call to imagine both the self and the world anew.SARAH AZIZA is a Palestinian American writer, translator, and artist with roots in ‘Ibdis and Deir al-Balah, Gaza. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and numerous grants from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, she has lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, South Africa, the West Bank, and the United States. Her award-winning journalism, poetry, essays, and experimental nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Baffler, Harper’s Magazine, Mizna, Lux, The Washington Post, The Intercept, The Rumpus, NPR, The Margins, and The Nation, among other publications.Eman Abdelhadi is an organizer, writer and scholar. She is assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where her research focuses on gender, migration and religion. Her academic work has appeared in Social Forces, Gender & Society, the British Journal of Sociology, and other outlets. She is also a columnist at In These Times magazine and co-author of the sci-fi novel: Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 (Common Notions Press, 2022). Abdelhadi organizes with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at UChicago, Scholars for Social Justice, Sociologists for Palestine, and other formations.Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. We have dimmable, non-fluorescent lights. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com. - **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/chicago/the-hollow-half-a-memoir-of-bodies-and-borders-by-sarah-aziza/100001333190130569 - **Event Categories**: art, literary-art, nonprofit, sports - **Interested Audience**: - total_interested_count: 0 ## Ticket Details - **Ticket Price Range**: min: 0, max: 0, currency: USD ## Event venue details - **city**: Chicago - **state**: IL - **country**: United States - **location**: Women & Children First - **lat**: 41.97722220000001 - **long**: -87.6682417 - **full address**: Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States ## Event gallery - **Alt text**: The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events7/banners/4bbb6551ae1882dcd177292c8e0d43a32262496e31e2d18b2d84538aefcd55d8-rimg-w1200-h600-dcecac64-gmir.jpg?v=1746065641 ## FAQs - **Q**: When and where is The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza being held? - **A:** The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza takes place on Thu, 22 May, 2025 at 07:00 pm to Thu, 22 May, 2025 at 08:30 pm at Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States. - **Q**: Who is organizing The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza? - **A:** The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza is organized by Women & Children First. - **Q**: Who is this event for? Is it right for me? - **A:** The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza is ideal for art lovers, collectors, creatives, and anyone inspired by visual arts, installations, and exhibitions. Whether you're a first-time attendee or a longtime enthusiast in Chicago, this event is thoughtfully curated to deliver a standout experience worth every moment. If The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza sounds like your kind of event, don't wait - spots fill up fast. ## Structured Data (JSON-LD) ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Event", "name": "The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza", "image": "https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events7/banners/4bbb6551ae1882dcd177292c8e0d43a32262496e31e2d18b2d84538aefcd55d8-rimg-w1200-h600-dcecac64-gmir.jpg?v=1746065641", "startDate": "2025-05-22", "endDate": "2025-05-22", "url": "https://allevents.in/chicago/the-hollow-half-a-memoir-of-bodies-and-borders-by-sarah-aziza/100001333190130569", "location": { "@type": "Place", "name": "Women & Children First", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "5233 North Clark Street", "postalCode": "60640", "addressLocality": "Chicago", "addressRegion": "IL", "addressCountry": "US" }, "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": "41.97722220000001", "longitude": "-87.6682417" } }, "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode", "description": "Sarah Aziza’s searing, genre-bending memoir traces three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to the Midwest to NYC—and back", "offers": [ { "@type": "AggregateOffer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availabilityStarts": "2026-04-09", "availabilityEnds": "2025-05-22", "validFrom": "2026-04-09", "lowPrice": "0.00", "highPrice": "0.00", "price": "0.00", "url": "https://allevents.in/chicago/the-hollow-half-a-memoir-of-bodies-and-borders-by-sarah-aziza/100001333190130569" }, { "@type": "Offer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availabilityStarts": "2026-04-09", "availabilityEnds": "", "validFrom": "2026-04-09", "url": "https://allevents.in/chicago/the-hollow-half-a-memoir-of-bodies-and-borders-by-sarah-aziza/100001333190130569", "price": 0, "name": "General Admission" }, { "@type": "Offer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availabilityStarts": "2026-04-09", "availabilityEnds": "", "validFrom": "2026-04-09", "url": "https://allevents.in/chicago/the-hollow-half-a-memoir-of-bodies-and-borders-by-sarah-aziza/100001333190130569", "price": 0, "name": "Donation to the WCF Event Fund" } ], "organizer": [ { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Women & Children First", "url": "https://allevents.in/org/women-and-children-first/17676387", "description": "Women & Children First is one of the largest feminist bookstores in the country, stocking more than 30,000 books by and about women, children's books for all ages, and the best of lesbian and gay fiction and non-fiction. And we also serve as a neighborhood bookstore to Andersonville, Edgewater, Rogers Park, and other parts of the northside of Chicago and Evanston. Anything we don't have in stock we can usually get in a few days' time, even if it's a title outside our specialty. We also carry cards, magazines, blank books and journals, calendars, gift items like candles, and pride products." } ] } ] ```