"Bridges of Verse: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s Journey Through Identity and Advocacy" by Neha Vignesh

In the world of contemporary literature, writing today is often about identity, advocacy and imagination. For Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a cross-cultural and continental traveller, this crossroads is both a challenge and a calling. Taking inspiration from this rich tradition and a deep-seated personal experience of displacement, Khalaf Tuffaha’s narratives are committed to storytelling as a form of protest, reflection, and community.
Her love for writing began in childhood. Having a grandfather who was a poet and had a weekly column in the Jordanian daily newspaper, Khalaf Tuffaha grew up on summers spent immersed in books, concepts, and the stanzas of Arabic poetry. Her grandfather’s literary production as poet, columnist, playwright and translator had brought a home filled with intellectual and literary discovery: “It was a home filled with poetry and books,” she remembers, which “inspired her love for language and storytelling.” It was this close exposure with literary world that gave birth to a childhood love for poetry and storytelling that created a passion for the transformative force of words.
This relationship to language grew as Khalaf Tuffaha found her way around the challenges of being a bilingual and bicultural person. Crossing between the Arab world and the United States, she found that language might be an open-ended mirror and bridge, as a way of showcasing cultural details and forming relations. Translation was now a fundamental element of her identity in the literal as well as the metaphorical realms. “Translation is a negotiation,” she says, “a way to bridge gaps and invite readers into multiple worlds.” Her literature is a weaving of voices, a multi-vocal discussion of identity and belonging.
The recent recognition of her work by the National Book Awards, as the winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry, speaks volumes about her craft and how deep she gets into challenging themes. Khalaf Tuffaha’s collection, Something about Living (University of Akron Press, 2024) are poems about the Palestinian-American experience, a meditation on how identities exist and conflict, even dissolve one another. Putting together this list was a project of love and a reflection. “These poems,” she notes, “were written over more than a decade, and bringing them together was like putting pieces of a puzzle in conversation.” The result is a work that’s less about individuals and more about a collective understanding of displacement, resiliency, and search for a place called home.
For Khalaf Tuffaha, awards such as the National Book Award are significant. It is not just a personal achievement but a space to increase the voices of the marginalized that can then be heard more widely: “It’s a chance to reach readers who might not otherwise encounter these stories,” she says, so that Palestinian realities of displacement, contested identity, and perseverance can find their place in the literary world.
In fact, advocacy is at the heart of her writing. She writes from the experience of her Arab-American upbringing and those communities’ struggles. “You cannot separate the personal from the political when you write about displacement and erasure,” she says. Not only is she writing about her experience, but she’s also writing about action and demanding readers embrace the inevitable truth of what American imperialism has done. Advocacy is not just in the realm of her writing but also in the physical action of resistance — protests, demands, and the constant work of taking accountability for the power imbalance.
Being writer and activist comes with challenges. Khalaf Tuffaha accepts the hardship that comes with writing about issues that are politically-charged. “Rejection is part of the process,” she discloses. She draws on the work of other activists, such as African-American writer June Jordan, and on the generations of Palestinian writers who have traversed the same ground — mixing art and activism in terms that are both intimately and universally felt.
Between the pressures of advocacy and imagination, Khalaf Tuffaha keeps expanding her creative realms. She is working on translation projects that bring additional Palestinian voices to light, a short novel, and another volume of poems. These opportunities offer recess and regeneration, a sign that art still matters even when it must acknowledge within it the disasters taking place in the world.
If you’re a budding author, Khalaf Tuffaha has wise words for you: resist the notion that art and activism are separate. “Both require a deep attentiveness to the world,” she says, “and both are acts of care and deep love.” Writing is like activism, a practice of being present, probing, and making connections in a world that is resistant to them. MORIA has had the wonderful opportunity to publish some of Khalaf Tuffaha’s poems in past issues, such as “Love Song for the Last of the Tall Trees” and “Miss Sahar Listens to Fairuz Sing ‘Take Me’” from Issue Three. “Love Song” ends with a line that might describe her life’s work, for her words are indeed “the sounds of a homeland circling its people.”
In a culture where art and activism are often treated as opposing elements, Khalaf Tuffaha’s story gives us a sense of how they both can come from the same place and origins. She takes us to the heart and soul of this world, and she teaches us to listen and learn and act on it.

Neha Vignesh

Neha Vignesh is a final-year architecture student, graduating in May 2025, and the Production Editor for MORIA. Born and raised in India, her designs are profoundly inspired by the cultural richness. Neha views architecture as more than the creation of structures—it is the art of crafting spaces that breathe, evolve, and hold the essence of life. To her, spaces are living organisms, born with purpose, aging gracefully, and carrying the weight of memories and stories. Rooted in her belief that ancient wisdom holds solutions to contemporary challenges, Neha passionately integrates traditional architectural principles into modern designs. For Neha, architecture is a timeless dialogue between humanity and the environment, a journey to shape a better, more connected world.