Do I believe my writing is capable of changing anyone but myself? Reader, admittedly, I don’t and so, I must learn new capacities. I myself struggle to find utility in the work I am capable of, in the face of genocide. Summer FarahĪs Gaza’s poets are assassinated, as the libraries are destroyed, as Palestinians across historic Palestine (and all over the world) are arrested for dissent, as writers face censorship globally for speaking the truth of the genocide that is occurring, we must consider: if literature is your corner, what will you do to rid it of these violences? The truth is I have never been able to look around a room and not see the genocidal escalation to come. How often have I chosen a slow death in service of comfort? The truth is, I have never been able to look around a room and not see the genocidal escalation to come-if the vitriolic disregard for human life, for Palestinian life, did not permeate through to our most mundane of activities, over 18,000 Palestinians would not have been killed in the past 67 days, over 1.5 million would not be displaced from Gaza. As I read and re-read Ghassan Kanafani’s On Zioni s t Literature, I am reminded that this work is, in fact, a matter of life-or-death literatures can set the stage for the attempted annihilation of a people, and it is our responsibility to point to it. In my work as a critic, I’ve often played it safe devoted my time to works I loved or could situate as a positive contribution to the culture, shying away from being public in my negative critiques. It is not just the scenes detailed by our great poets that makes the ground feel realer under my feet, but the gravitational pull towards each other that gives me belief in that liberated homeland. Please make a donation to our year end campaign today.Īs a Palestinian in diaspora, nothing builds my connection to the land more than literature. We need you to contribute to keep it that way. EL’s archives of thousands of essays, stories, poems, and reading lists are also free. Electric Literature published over 500 writers and nearly 600 articles in 2023-all of which are free for you to read.
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