Gaza Writes Back

Gaza Writes Back is a collection of short stories from fifteen young writers in Gaza, members of a generation that has suffered immensely under Israel's siege and blockade. Their experiences, especially during and following Israel's 2008-2009 offensive known as "Operation Cast Lead", have fundamentally impacted their lives and their writing. Indeed, many of these writers saw the war as a catalyst for their writing, as they sought an outlet and a voice in its aftermath. They view the book as a means of preserving Palestinian memories and presenting their narratives to the world without filters. Their words take us into the homes and hearts of moms, dads, students, children, and elders striving to live lives of dignity, compassion, and meaning in one of the world's most embattled communities. These stories are acts of resistance and defiance, proclaiming the endurance of Palestinians and the continuing resilience and creativity of their culture in the face of ongoing obstacles and attempts to silence them. Whether tackling the tragedy that surrounds missile strikes and home raids, or the everyday indignities encountered by Palestinian refugees, Gaza Writes Back brings to life the real issues that the people of Gaza face. One prominent theme in many of the stories is the wisdom of parents and grandparents. A sense of longing pervades the book, as the characters in the stories reveal desires ranging from the mundane to the complex--including, in several of the stories, a strong yearning to return to the characters' family homes and properties after many decades in exile. Social differences within Gaza are also sensitively explored. Readers will be moved by the struggles big and small that emerge from the well-crafted writing, and by the hope and courage that radiates from the authors' biographies. Five years after Operation Cast Lead, these stories remind us that the pain lingers on and the people of Gaza will be forever scarred by the attack. Yet, the call for justice remains forceful and persistent, and these young Gazan writers refuse to let the world forget about them--their land, their people, and their story.

Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine, edited by Refaat Alareer is a compelling collection of short stories from fifteen young writers in Gaza, members of a generation that has suffered immensely under Israel's siege and blockade. Their experiences, especially during and following Israel's 2008-2009 offensive known as "Operation Cast Lead", have fundamentally impacted their lives and their writing. Indeed, many of these writers saw the war as a catalyst for their writing, as they sought an outlet and a voice in its aftermath. They view the book as a means of preserving Palestinian memories and presenting their own narratives to the world without filters. Their words take us into the homes and hearts of moms, dads, students, children, and elders striving to live lives of dignity, compassion, and meaning in one of the world's most embattled communities. (Some of the stories also take us with courage and empathy into the imagined world of Israelis living just on the other side of the great barriers Israel has built in and around Gaza and the West Bank to wall the Palestinians in.)

During Israel's lengthy 2014 assault on Gaza, voices worldwide rose in stunned protest. Using numerous creative means, Palestinians and their allies bore witness to the Israeli attacks--and to the siege that has strangled Gaza ever since. Gaza Unsilenced foregrounds the words and images with which Gaza Palestinians recorded the pain, losses, and dislocations of the attacks, the continuing punishment of the siege, and their community's resilience and dignity. The book includes original contributions from the editors themselves along with essays, reportage, images, and poetry from Gaza and elsewhere. Contributors include: Ali Abunimah, Ramzi Baroud, Diana Buttu, Belal Dabour, Chris Hedges, Rashid Khalidi, and Eman Mohammed.

On July 8, 2014, Israel launched air strikes and a ground invasion of Gaza, that lasted 51 days, leaving over 2,000 people dead, the vast majority of whom were Gazan civilians. During the assault, at least 10,000 homes were destroyed and, according to the United Nations, nearly 300,000 Palestinians were displaced. Max Blumenthal was on the ground during what he argues was an entirely avoidable catastrophe. In this explosive work of reportage, Blumenthal reveals the harrowing conditions and cynical deceptions that led to the ruinous war. Here, for the first time, Blumenthal unearths and presents shocking evidence of atrocities he gathered in the rubble of Gaza.

Imagining the future of Gaza beyond the cruelties of occupation and Apartheid, Light in Gaza is a powerful contribution to understanding Palestinian experience. Gaza, home to two million people, continues to face suffocating conditions imposed by Israel. This distinctive anthology imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation. Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment.

This collection lends a critical decolonising lens to intercultural communication research, bringing together perspectives on how forms of education embedded in the arts and humanities can open up intercultural understanding among young people in conditions of conflict and protracted crises. The book draws on case studies from a range of educational contexts in the Global South which engage in creative arts methodologies to foreground decolonising approaches to intercultural communication in which researchers question their own power in the research process. The volume offers intercultural resources that can be used by researchers and community support groups to foster active intercultural communication, dialogue, participation, and responsibility among young people in these settings and those who may be marginalised from them. The collection also highlights the reflexive accounts of researchers working in a transnational, interdisciplinary, and multilingual research network and the subsequent opportunities and challenges of working in such networks. Advocating for intercultural understanding among young people in higher education and a greater focus on social justice in intercultural communication research, this book will be of interest to students and researchers in applied linguistics, language education, intercultural education, and multilingualism.

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians? Covering a range of approaches – from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever. Translated from the Arabic by Raph Cormack, Mohamed Ghalaieny, Andrew Leber, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Yasmine Seale and Jonathan Wright. WINNER of a PEN Translates Award 2018. One of NPR's Favourite Books of 2019. 'It's necessary, of course. But above all it's bold, brilliant and inspiring: a sign of boundless imagination and fierce creation even in circumstances of oppression, denial, silencing and constriction. The voices of these writers demand to be heard - and their stories are defiantly entertaining.' - Bidisha 'This worthy collection excavates and probes, and reacquaints the west with the horrors of Palestinian existence right now.' - Middle East Eye 'Just as we do when Handmaids Tale or Black Mirror plots unfold on the screen, you are most likely to read Palestine +100 and say, this is now.' - Lithub

This cutting-edge research companion addresses our current understanding of literary journalism’s global scope and evolution, offering an immersive study of how different nations have experimented with and perfected the narrative journalistic form/genre over time. The Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism demonstrates the genre’s rich genealogy and global impact through a comprehensive study of its many traditions, including the crónica, the ocherk, reportage, the New Journalism, the New New Journalism, Jornalismo literário, periodismo narrativo, bao gao wen xue, creative nonfiction, Literarischer Journalismus, As-SaHafa al Adabiyya, and literary nonfiction. Contributions from a diverse range of established and emerging scholars explore key issues such as the current role of literary journalism in countries radically affected by the print media crisis and the potential future of literary journalism, both as a centerpiece to print media writ large and as an academic discipline universally recognized around the world. The book also discusses literary journalism's responses to war, immigration, and censorship; its many female and Indigenous authors; and its digital footprints on the internet. This extensive and authoritative collection is a vital resource for academics and researchers in literary journalism studies, as well as in journalism studies and literature in general. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.