Our identity is shaped by so much more than where we come from, it’s shaped by the people who teach us what it means to belong there.

In this episode of Siti’s Stories, Laila sits down with Palestinian-American educator, PhD scholar and author of the children’s book Lana Makes Purple Pizza, Amanda Najib. 

Amanda shares how growing up deeply proud of her Palestinian identity and especially the influence of her Siti has shaped nearly every part of the person she is today: her writing, scholarship, teaching, activism, and the way she raises the next generation.

From spending her college summers teaching English in refugee camps around the world to now teaching future educators how to honor the cultures, identities, and stories their students bring into the classroom, Amanda has built much of her work around the belief that our stories and where we come from matter.

At the center of her own story is her Siti and the village of Hizma, Palestine. Amanda reflects on living with her grandmother in Hizma at 19; cooking together, picking zaytoon, and learning from a woman she remembers as both deeply gentle and incredibly strong.

We talk about Palestinian identity and representation, education, writing, Palestinian feminism, motherhood, village life, grandmothers, and what it means to carry what they gave us forward.

Stay tuned until the end to hear the updates happening at Siti's Stories! 

🔗 Connect with Amanda:
@amandanajib_writes on Instagram

🔗 Connect with Siti’s Stories:
Instagram: @sitis.stories
Website: sitisstories.com

In this episode of Siti’s Stories, Laila sits down with Deanna Othman;  a writer, journalist, educator, and community advocate and organizer. 

In this conversation, she reflects on the realities of working within media and the moment she realized that pursuing mainstream journalism would come at the cost of her values. From there, she made a different choice. One rooted in integrity, in education, and in staying aligned with what she believes.

We also talk about how that shows up in her classroom and how she teaches her students to think critically about what they’re consuming, especially in a time where information is constant, fast-moving, and often shaped by AI. Also how intentional she is about making sure her students see themselves reflected in what they read and learn.

She also shares a meaningful moment meeting Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer she has long admired. 

And woven throughout all of this… is her Siti.

Deanna shares the story of her grandmother, who came to Chicago after the Nakba and held tightly to her faith, her culture, and her values. She passed that down in a way that still shapes Deanna today. Especially when it comes to prayer, conviction, and not being afraid to stand on truth.

This episode is about staying rooted  in your values, your voice, and the path you choose to walk.

🔗 Connect with Deanna: @deannaothman

🔗 Connect with Siti’s Stories:
Instagram: @sitis.stories
Website: sitisstories.com

📌 Resources from this episode:

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP): https://www.ampalestine.org
AMP Chicago: https://www.ampalestine.org/chapters
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In this episode of Siti’s Stories, we sit down with Dr. Nina Shoman-Dajani,  Executive Director of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival and Assistant Dean of Learning Enrichment at a local college for a conversation about community leadership, Palestinian cinema, and the power of representation.

Through both education and the arts, Nina has devoted her career to creating spaces where Palestinian voices can thrive. Whether she’s working with students in higher education or helping bring Palestinian films to audiences across Chicago, her work is rooted in a deep commitment to community, representation, and meaningful impact.

Founded in 2001, the Chicago Palestine Film Festival is the longest-running Palestinian film festival in the world. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the volunteer-led festival brings filmmakers, artists, and audiences together to create space for collective connection, healing, and cultural preservation.

But Nina’s work extends far beyond the screen.

As a leader in higher education, she is deeply committed to equity, representation, and uplifting minority and Arab students. After growing up in the Bay Area with little Palestinian community, moving to Chicago, home to one of the largest Palestinian diasporas deepened her connection to culture, identity, and collective belonging.

In this episode, we talk about:

• The role of education in creating representation, opportunity, and meaningful change for minority and Arab students
• The power of Palestinian cinema and the impact of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival as it celebrates 25 years
• How storytelling and film create space for Palestinian voices, creativity, and collective healing
• Nina’s mother, a Nakba survivor whose resilience shaped Nina’s connection to her Palestinian identity
• The traditions, values, and love of the land passed down through generations and how Nina is now carrying that legacy forward to her own children

This episode is about community, leadership, and the ways we carry our people forward.

Connect with Dr. Nina: @ninadajani
Chicago Palestine Film Festival: @chipalfilmfest
Tickets: palestinefilmfest.com

Siti’s Stories:
Instagram: @sitis.stories
Website: sitisstories.com

What does it mean to farm under occupation?

In this episode of Siti’s Stories, I sit down with Lana Mustafa the Executive Director of Montclair Community Farms and founder of Roots of Resilience.

Lana’s work directly supports Palestinian farmers  the very people on the front lines of occupation. We talk about how land, seeds, water, and agriculture in Palestine are used of tools of control.

From cutting off water access, restricting crops like za’atar, flooding markets to create dependency, and targeting farmers’ livelihoods; Palestinian agriculture is intentionally disrupted.

And yet farmers (fallahin) endure.

We speak about seed saving as resistance. About food sovereignty in Palestine. About growing Palestinian seeds in the diaspora. And about how village farmers are the ones quietly holding down culture, identity, and tradition.

This conversation is layered and deeply personal.

Lana shares:
 • Growing up in a fallahi farming village in Palestine
 • Starting Roots of Resilience in 2024 to financially and physically support Palestinian farmers
 • Leaving an abusive marriage, becoming a single mom of three, and how reconnecting to the land grounded her and gave her a new beginning
 • Our shared invisible illnesses and how stress, grief, and genocide impact our bodies
 • Why taking tangible action and creating change can be a path toward healing

We also talk about the funniest small-world Palestinian moment, how Lana once met my grandmother because of her thobe… and how we’re speaking about it years later. SubhanAllah.

This episode is honest, vulnerable, informative, and hopeful. It’s about Palestinian land, Palestinian farmers, food sovereignty, and the women who carry forward what was planted before them.

Grow your own with https://www.palestineheirloomseedlibrary.com/ 

🌿 Connect with Lana: @this_bee_lana and @roots_of_resilience_
 🌿Follow us at @sitis.stories and visit sitisstories.com

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream.

In this episode of Siti’s Stories, Laila sits with Wafa Ghnaim an art and dress historian, embroiderer, educator, and founder of the Tatreez Institute for a conversation about tatreez as inherited knowledge and preservation. 

Wafa shares how tatreez entered her life as an intergenerational skill passed through the women around her, and how stitching became something she returned to again and again. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear about:

• Her journey from classroom teacher to researcher and eventually becoming a historian of Palestinian dress. 
• Her work with major institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum & why museums that hold Palestinian dress have a moral and ethical responsibility to steward these collections transparently and accessibly
• How witnessing the genocide in Gaza has changed her, and how she turned to writing, archiving, and sitting with the dresses as a way to endure
• The lessons Palestinian women past and present  have taught her about identity, self-expression, and being unapologetically yourself

We also settle some very important (and very serious) fashion questions… belts on thobes. 

This conversation holds it all: the personal, the educational, and the lighthearted.

Additional resources mentioned in the episode:

• Wafa’s publication with the Met: Tatreez in Time
  https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/tatreez-in-time
• Traditional Palestinian Costume by Hanan Munayyer — one of Wafa’s mentors (including the hot pink thobe discussed in the episode)
  https://interlinkbooks.com/traditional-palestinian-costume/

Learn more about Wafa and her mother’s work at:
🌿 tatreezandtea.com

Connect with Wafa:
📍 Instagram: @tatreezandtea

Connect with Siti’s Stories:
🎧 sitisstories.com
📸 @sitis.stories

In this episode, I sit down with Najla Khass, a Palestinian-American activist and refugee resettlement manager. Born in Gaza, Najla fled with her family at eight years old during the First Intifada, part of a long history of displacement that traces back to the 1948 Nakba.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Growing up in Gaza with fear and restriction but also so much love and the ways her parents tried to protect shield her living under occupation. 
• Soldiers as a childhood boogeyman and the constant presence of unknown
• Arriving in the U.S. as a traumatized child and experiencing so many levels of culture shock
• She shares stories of her grandmothers whose humor, courage, and resistance shaped her understanding of strength and resilience.
• How Najla uses her lived experience to support refugees with deep empathy and awareness
• Building community and advocacy through House of Hope, a home and network created to support Gazan refugees with dignity

This conversation was recorded before the most recent ceasefire, at a time when emotions were already heavy. Listening now, Najla’s story feels even more urgent and even more grounding in its reminder of how lived experience can be transformed into helping others.

Connect with Najla: Follow Najla: @lady_najla80

Learn more about House of Hope: gazahouseofhope.org

Connect with Siti’s Stories: 

Follow Siti’s Stories: @sitis.stories  

Visit: sitisstories.com

Filmmaker Cherien Dabis joins Siti’s Stories for an honest, layered conversation about representation, intergenerational trauma, and why film became her way of telling stories with care and truth.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• What it was like growing up Arab in small-town America after the Gulf War feeling invisible and hyper-visible at the same time
• Why stories carry real power and how film became Cherien’s way of pushing back against harmful stereotypes
• A reflection on intergenerational trauma and how occupation touches every Palestinian family across generations
• How grief and anger can be transformed into creative work that honors humanity rather than explaining it
• Her latest film, All That’s Left of You, an intergenerational Palestinian film and how its production became a reflection of displacement itself
• A candid conversation about racism in Hollywood and the necessity of building your own spaces when systems refuse entry
• How hearing audiences say “I didn’t know, and now I see” continues to fuel this work

This conversation is about reclaiming narrative; about telling our stories as they are, without translation or permission, and honoring the humanity that has always been there.

🎬 All That’s Left of You - Screenings & Showtimes

https://www.watermelonpictures.com/films/all-thats-left-of-you

Connect with Cherien Dabis

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cheriendabis/
Production Company: https://www.visibilityfilms.com

Connect with Siti’s Stories

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sitis.stories/
Website: https://www.sitisstories.com

In this episode, we sit down with multidisciplinary artist and urban planner Dana Barqawi to explore the power of art as resistance, storytelling, and truth-telling.

Dana’s work challenges colonial narratives, honors Indigenous identity, and reflects the interconnectedness of womanhood, history, and community. Her creative process begins with deep research and writing; transforming emotion and lived experience into visual language that speaks across generations.

Topics we explore:
 • Art as communication and community-building
 • Palestinian identity and Indigenous storytelling
 • Womanhood, memory, and intergenerational influence
 • Art as resistance to colonial narratives
 • Channeling emotion into purpose and movement
 • The global interconnectedness of oppression but also freedom

If you’re drawn to Palestinian art, social impact, or creative resistance, this conversation offers a powerful look into how art can mobilize, heal, and hold our collective histories.

🌿 Explore Dana’s work: danabarqawi.com
📸 Connect with Dana on Instagram: Dana_Barqawi

✨ Connect with us:
 Website: sitisstories.com Instagram: sitis.stories

📬 Sign up for The Olive Press to get exclusive reflections + behind-the-scenes episode content.

In this tender and deeply grounding episode, we sit with Mai Khader Kakish; storyteller, recipe-keeper, and the heart behind Almond & Fig. 🌿

Mai shares how Almond & Fig began as a way to feel closer to home while her family remained in Palestine;  a place to preserve her teta’s recipes and document the stories, wisdom, and traditions woven into every dish. For Mai, food is not just nourishment; it is storytelling, resistance, and the inheritance of a people who survived unimaginable loss. 

This episode was recorded during some of the darkest days of the ongoing genocide before any aid was allowed in and at the height of starvation and you can feel both the weight and the warmth in our conversation. We let the episode begin exactly as it unfolded: raw, unfiltered, and honest. 

Together, we delve into:
 • Preserving ancestral recipes and the love tucked into every little “hastak” 
 • Armenian–Palestinian lineage, generational survival, and carrying forward what others tried to erase
 • Food as memory, identity, resistance, and inheritance
 • The grief of losing our grandmothers and keeping their stories alive 🤍
 • How food is being intentionally weaponized and the devastating impact of forced starvation
 • The work Mai does with the Seraj Library Project 

This conversation is about the women who raised us, the hands that fed us, and the ways we continue to carry them; through recipes, memory, and heritage preservation

📚For more about the Seraj Library Project and ways to support, visit serajlibraries.org
Follow Mai at @almondandfig for recipes, heritage, and storytelling.
Stay connected with us: @sitis.stories • sitisstories.com

What does it mean to stitch memory into fabric and to turn thread into a language of home, resistance, and love? ✨

In this week’s episode of Siti’s Stories, I sit with Bayan the founder of Badan Collective a design house and learning space dedicated to preserving Palestinian embroidery, memory, and storytelling. She is also a writer, poet, and a social worker.  

In this episode, you’ll hear:
 • The meaning and legacy of tatreez  and its role in preserving Palestinian identity
 • How joy and grief are intertwined threads of Palestinian life
 • The power of intergenerational womanhood and ancestral memory
 • How slow, human-centered fashion becomes an act of cultural resistance
 • Why our generation is stepping into its role as cycle breakers and storykeepers

💌 Subscribe to The Olive Press, Siti’s Stories’ weekly newsletter, for exclusive reflections, heritage resources, and behind-the-scenes letters from each episode.

Connect with Bayan: badancollective.com | @badancollective
Connect with Siti’s Stories: sitisstories.com | @sitis.stories