Sumud - by Malu Halasa & Jordan Elgrably (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Arabic word sumåud often translates as "steadfastness" or "standing fast." Today, it is a Palestinian cultural value of perseverance and nonviolent resistance in the face of Israeli occupation and genocide. In times of devastation, poetry, literature, and art are the mediums through which oppressed citizens of the world reveal cherished aspects of their existences. Sumåud: A New Palestinian Reader expresses the Palestinian spirit and its cultural power, even in the face of oppression, occupation, and war. When too many world governments turn a blind eye to the genocide and the dilapidation of a sacred homeland, the Palestinian people stand fast and resist. The fifty-eight contributions in this collection remind readers that just as love perseveres, so do the Palestinians, and their struggles and triumphs"--

Book Synopsis

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 he unpacks 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.

Review Quotes

"The world cracked open and Palestine was revealed in all her beauty and pain. This book is a love letter, a prayer for survival, and a poem of resistance."
--Nan Goldin

"A powerful and inspiring testament to the human spirit, to the resilience of the Palestinian people, and to their indomitable struggle for liberation."
--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

"A powerful anthology that courses through Palestinian history and culture bringing together a multiplicity of voices, both academic and artistic. The desire to destroy and denigrate Palestinians and their culture predate, but are an integral part of, the Zionist project. This anthology serves as a manual of resistance; it showcases the range of fine writing on Palestine while documenting Palestinian resilience throughout the decades."
--Selma Dabbagh, author of Out of It and editor of We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers

"The ongoing attempted erasure of Palestine and its people by Israel is shown in detail in the varied contributions to this overwhelming anthology, as well as the Palestinians' will to survive and persist in their full humanity."
--Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition

"It's astonishing to me that, despite the blizzard of barbarism currently being visited on them, Palestinians continue to produce such stunning writing. This excellent compilation is essential reading."
--Brian Eno, musician, visual artist, and activist for Palestinian liberation

About the Author

MALU HALASA, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is a Jordanian Filipina American writer and editor. Her latest edited anthology is Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women's Protests in Iran (Saqi Books, 2023). Previous co-edited anthologies include: Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014); The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design (Chronicle Books, 2008); Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran (Hatje Cantz, 2005); and the short series: Transit Beirut: New Writing and Images, with Rosanne Khalaf (Saqi Books, 2004), and Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations, with Maziar Bahari, (Garnet Press, 2008). She was managing editor of the Prince Claus Fund Library, in Amsterdam; Editor at Large for Portal 9, in Beirut, and a founding editor of Tank Magazine, in London. She has written for The Guardian, Financial Times and Times Literary Supplement. Her debut novel, Mother of All Pigs (Unnamed Press, 2017), was described as: "a microcosmic portrait of ... a patriarchal order in slow-motion decline" by the New York Times. Her writing, edited anthologies, and exhibitions chart a changing Middle East.

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.