This post was updated Oct. 3 at 8:15 p.m.

It’s not every day one can listen to a book reading for 24 hours straight.

Twenty-seven UCLA departments and units collaborated to host a 24-hour reading of Edward Said’s 1999 memoir “Out of Place” from Tuesday to Wednesday. The event, hosted in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, allowed students to hear Said’s memoir about his life and identity as a Palestinian American growing up in Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon. After being diagnosed with leukemia in 1991, Said sought to recapture his conflicting identities as a Christian Palestinian, someone with a British first name, an Arab last name and an American father, and someone who experienced the changes in Palestine as Israel gained statehood.

The communal event comes in the wake of numerous student protests on campus last academic year that decried Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip and called on the UC to divest from companies associated with the Israeli military. Multiple encampments and protests were met with police response and student arrests.

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In her 9 a.m. remarks beginning the event, English professor Yogita Goyal said Said’s resilience in the face of insurmountable challenges and his belief that no cause is ever truly lost are particularly relevant today.

“Said makes us rethink the meaning of childhood, belonging, alienation, persecution and emancipation in our place,” she said.

Goyal added that the tradition of 24-hour readings at UCLA began in 1996, with the third year featuring actor John Lithgow reading Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and an appearance from Rosa Parks. At Tuesday’s iteration, English professors took turns at the microphone, each taking a chapter of Said’s text under the morning sun.

Students came and went, some walking by and stopping to briefly listen to a story about Said’s relationship with his father while growing up in Lebanon. Others brought yoga mats, lawn chairs, lunch and homework and camped out while the 2 p.m. breeze accompanied the reading. Riley Tongberg, a fourth-year global studies student, said they appreciated the relevancy of the topic at hand.

“Now more than ever, his work and his stories and personal experiences are very relevant in terms of current events and what’s happening in Gaza right now,” Tongberg said.

Said’s theme of feeling out of place was clear after sitting and listening to the reading for half an hour, resonating in each anecdote of the memoir, they added. Said’s story offered a chance for listeners to empathize with someone who directly experienced the conflict, Tongberg said. Moreover, the 24-hour nature of the reading made the event more accessible and allowed students to stop by whenever they had the time, said Emma Bartlett, a fourth-year biochemistry student.

“It’s very low-key, and people can stop by but still be exposed to so many different perspectives,” Bartlett said.

Saree Makdisi – the chair of the English department, who also attended the event – said Said’s writing can help people better understand themselves and their place under structures of power.

A main mission of Said’s intellectual project is to clarify that societal expectations of identity are often misleading, Makdisi added. People can become distracted by questions of identity and culture, he said, losing sight of who or what holds the power in the dynamic.

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Makdisi added that he believed the reading to be particularly relevant in the wake of the University’s response to last spring’s protests and hopes people will be reminded that college campuses should be places free of censorship. Goyal also said that she hopes the public reading could bring the campus together.

“As somebody who has taught on this campus for 21 years, there have been many moments since spring when UCLA has seemed like a lost cause,” she said. “Part of what we are hoping to do today is to challenge that.”