Conversations from the Cullman Center: My Hijacking: Martha Hodes with Stacy Schiff
A historian examines her childhood memories of being on a hijacked airliner in 1970.
On September 6, 1970, 12-year-old Martha Hodes and her 13-year-old sister were flying unaccompanied back to New York City from Israel when their plane was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced to land in the Jordan desert. Too young to understand the gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hodes grew up with hazy and fragmented memories of those six days and nights as a hostage. Nearly a half-century later, as a professional historian, she returns to those memories, drawing on deep archival research and extensive interviews both to re-create what happened to her as a child and to understand the larger context of the world-historical event in which she unwittingly participated.
Martha Hodes wrote My Hijacking during her 2018–2019 Fellowship at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She will discuss the book with biographer Stacy Schiff.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Martha Hodes, Professor of History at New York University, is the author of Mourning Lincoln; The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century; and White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University, the Whiting Foundation, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, where she was a Fellow in 2018-19.
Stacy Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, which was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent books include Cleopatra: A Life and The Witches: Salem, 1692. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a Director’s Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library in 2002-2003.
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GET THE BOOK
If you have a NYPL library card—or live in New York state and want to apply for one now—you can borrow My Hijacking for free with our e-reader app SimplyE, available for iOS and Android devices.
Readers everywhere who wish to purchase copies of My Hijacking can do so at The New York Public Library Shop. All proceeds benefit the New York Public Library. Plus, receive a 125th Anniversary tote bag with your purchase!
COVID PROTOCOLS FOR IN-PERSON CONVERSATIONS FROM THE CULLMAN CENTER
The New York Public Library no longer mandates proof of vaccination at indoor public programs. Patrons are strongly encouraged to wear a mask at Conversations from the Cullman Center events.
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In-Person
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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.