Your Silence Will Not Protect You
“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself – a Black woman warrior poet doing my work – come to ask you, are you doing yours?” – Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.
The following resources in Stuart Hall Library is a small but growing list of materials that speak to Palestinian thinkers, activists and artists. This includes stories of Palestinian life, the struggle of colonised people, voices of solidarity, love, liberation, queerness, survival, women voices, the media, joy and the future.
Staff Highlights
From Tavian Hunter, Library Manager:
Funambulist, no. 50
Nakba, sumud, intifada : a personal lexicon of Palestinian loss and resistance by Rana Issa (The Funambulist; no. 50, pages 34-39)
In this article featured in the Funambulist magazine, Rana Issa interrogates the vocabulary used to articulate the loss and conditions of Palestine through the lens of a personal narrative around three significant words used by Palestinians: nakba, sumud, intifada. The article also reminds us that the sacralisation of political concepts is full of traps and that it is necessary for them to evolve through their practice to remain potent instead.
Dreams of a nation: on Palestinian cinema.
Dreams of a nation: on Palestinian cinema. Edited by Hamid Dabashi with preface by Edward Said.
In Dreams of a Nation, is the first anthology devoted to Palestinian cinema. Nine filmmakers, critics and scholars discuss the emergence of Palestinian cinema as a major artistic force on the global scene as well as the social significance rooted in historical struggles of self-determination and anti-colonial resistance movements.
Freedom is a constant struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement
Freedom is a constant struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement by Angela Y. Davis and edited by Frank Barat.
Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis is known for her advocacy for the liberation of Palestine. She reminds us that ‘freedom is a constant struggle’ and in this book illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.
Reflecting on the importance of Black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism, she highlights connections between Black freedom struggles and today’s struggles against state terror. In the speech, ‘On Palestine, G4S and the Prison-Industrial Complex’ given at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2013 draws connections around militarised police power in Palestine and protests against police murder in Ferguson.
Made in Palestine
Made in Palestine: Station Museum, Houston, Texas, May-October, 2003. Preface by Tarif Abboushi; introduction by James Harithas ; essays by Tex Kerschen and others.
Made in Palestine is one of the first museum exhibitions in the US devoted to the contemporary art of Palestine. It features twenty-three Palestine artists living in Syria, Jordan, Germany and the US, some of which live in exile or under military occupation, depicting a historical story of the Palestinian people from the Nakba of 1948 to their dream for a homeland, through painting, sculpture, video, textiles, ceramics and photography.
Librarians and archivists to Palestine: DS128.4 Library of Congress call number for ‘intifada’ created through struggle by the librarians at Birzeit University
Librarians and archivists to Palestine: DS128.4 Library of Congress call number for ‘intifada’ created through struggle by the librarians at Birzeit University (Read online)
In the summer of 2013, sixteen librarians and archivists travelled to Palestine to explore issues of access to information and cultural heritage and issues of colonial struggles, sharing ideas with colleagues in Palestine, offering expertise and learning from theirs. The delegation offers a unique voice in support of the Palestinian-led movement for boycott against Israeli apartheid in the form of a zine.
From Charlotte Mui, Assistant Librarian:
Throughout history, stories have taken form as protest and dialogue; recording, understanding, and shaping moments of desolation. These writings, poems, and drawings evoke emotion in their readers — allowing us to connect and empathise with their experience — and in the process, we find solidarity and hope.
Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd; with foreword by Aja Monet.
Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd; with foreword by Aja Monet.
Each day after school, Mohammed El-Kurd’s grandmother welcomed him at the door of his home with a bouquet of jasmine. Her name was Rifqa — she was older than Israel itself and an icon of Palestinian resilience. With razor-sharp wit and glistening moral clarity, El-Kurd lays bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism. His poems trace Rifqa‘s exile from Haifa to his family’s current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the cyclical and relentless horror of the Nakba. El-Kurd’s debut collection definitively shows that the Palestinian struggle is a revolution, until victory.
Palestine in black and white by Mohammed Sabaaneh
Palestine in black and white by Mohammed Sabaaneh
An intimate and powerful portrayal of life under occupation from one of the most talented cartoonists working today. This first collection brings together one hundred of Sabaaneh’s most striking works, including cartoons that portray the experience of Palestinian prisoners, drawn while Sabaaneh himself was detained in an Israeli prison. The drawings do not flinch from revealing the reality that confronts Palestinians, from Israel’s injustices in the West Bank to their military operations on Gaza.
Before the next bomb drops: rising up from Brooklyn to Palestine by Remi Kanazi
Before the next bomb drops: rising up from Brooklyn to Palestine by Remi Kanazi
Remi Kanazi’s poetry presents an unflinching look at the lives of Palestinians under occupation and as refugees scattered across the globe. He captures the Palestinian people’s stubborn refusal to be erased, gives voices to the ongoing struggle for liberation, and explores the meaning of international solidarity. In this latest collection, Kanazi expands his focus outside the sphere of Palestine and examines the meaning of international solidarity.
Captive Revolution: Palestinian women’s anti-colonial struggle within the Israeli prison system by Nahla Abdo
Captive Revolution: Palestinian women’s anti-colonial struggle within the Israeli prison system by Nahla Abdo
Nahla Abdo’s Captive Revolution seeks to break the silence on Palestinian women political detainees, providing a vital contribution to research on women, revolutions, national liberation and anti-colonial resistance. Based on the stories of the women themselves, Abdo draws on a wealth of oral history and primary research in order to analyse Palestinian women’s anti-colonial struggle, their agency and their treatment as political detainees.
Voices of the Nakba : a living history of Palestine edited by Diana Allan
Voices of the Nakba : a living history of Palestine edited by Diana Allan
During the 1948 war more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were violently expelled from their homes by Zionist militias. The legacy of the Nakba – which translates to ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ – lays bare the violence of the ongoing Palestinian plight. Voices of the Nakba collects the stories of first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, documenting a watershed moment in the history of the modern Middle East through the voices of the people who lived through it. The interviews, with commentary from leading scholars of Palestine and the Middle East, offer a vivid journey into the history, politics and culture of Palestine, defining Palestinian popular memory on its own terms in all its plurality and complexity.
Light in Gaza: writings born of fire edited by Jehad Absalim, Jennifer Bing, and Michael Merryman-Lotze
Light in Gaza: writings born of fire edited by Jehad Absalim, Jennifer Bing, and Michael Merryman-Lotze
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.
Please note this is an ongoing blog that will continue to be developed. A much longer list of books, articles, zines and journals is featured in the Stuart Hall Library catalogue. We hope this will serve as a means to use for education, critical dialogue and collective care.
Last updated: 3 October 2024
