Ingram
Couldn't load pickup availability
An anthology that celebrates the power of culture in Palestinian resistance, with selections of memoir, short stories, essays, book reviews, personal narrative, poetry, and art.
Includes twenty-five black-and-white illustrations by Palestinian artists.
The Arabic word sumūd is often loosely translated as “steadfastness” or “standing fast.” It is, above all, a Palestinian cultural value of everyday perseverance in the face of Israeli occupation. Sumūd is both a personal and collective commitment; people determine their own lives, despite the environment of constant oppressions imposed upon them.
This anthology spans the 20th and 21st centuries of Palestinian cultural history, and highlights writing from 2021–2024. The collection of writing and art features work from forty-six contributors including:
- Dispatches from Hossam Madhoun, co-founder of Gaza's Theatre for Everybody, as he survives the post-October 2023 war on Gaza;
- Novelist Ahmed Masoud with “Application 39,” a sci-fi short story about a Dystopian bid for the Olympics;
- Sara Roy and Ivar Ekeland with “The New Politics of Exclusion: Gaza as Prologue,” an analysis of Israel’s divide and conquer policies of fragmentation;
- Historian Ilan Pappé with a review of Tahrir Hamdi’s book, Imagining Palestine, in which heunpacks the relationship between culture and resistance;
- Essayist Lina Mounzer with “Palestine and the Unspeakable,” an offering on the language used to dehumanize Palestinians;
- And poetry by the next generation of poets who have inherited the mantle of the late Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008).
The essays, stories, poetry, art and personal narrative collected in Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader is a rich riposte to those who would denigrate Palestinians’ aspirations for a homeland. It also serves as a timely reminder of culture’s power and importance during occupation and war.
Reviews
—Nathan Thrall, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
"If books could save the living, this one would rescue a nation. Sumūd is a vital anthology of writing and art that beats with the heart of Palestinian resilience, creativity, and resistance, much of it astonishingly composed amid an ongoing genocide."
—Moustafa Bayoumi, author of the American Book Award winner How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America
“This must-read anthology is an important contribution to our struggle for the truth against those who attempt to bury or distort it. Sumūd is full of heart and sets down the record of our time truthfully and eloquently, while serving as an antidote to the live-streamed Israeli horrors and US’s complicity in the genocide.”
—Michel Moushabeck, writer, editor, and founder of Interlink Publishing
About the Author
JORDAN ELGRABLY is an American, French and Moroccan writer and translator whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in many anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and The Paris Review. Editor-in-chief and founder of The Markaz Review, he is the cofounder and former director of the Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz in Los Angeles (2001–2020). He is the editor of Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights, 2024). Based in Montpellier, France and California.
ISBN: 978-1644214459
Dimensions
Dimensions
Care Instructions
Care Instructions
