Weekly Roundup
Things I’m reading and listening to
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First, a note on language:
Yesterday’s discourse made very clear what many of us have known for years - antisemitism has been evacuated of all meaning and is now controlled by Zionists logic. When the term is weaponized by Zionists (whether Jewish, Christian, or any other group) to protect Zionists, Zionism, and the Zionist state, its use actively excludes anti-Zionist Jews, as well as actually Semitic people (like Palestinians). Language matters. Antisemitism is now a politically charged dog whistle used to further the dehumanization of Palestinians and justify the genocide in Gaza. These days, the hackles on my neck rise whenever I hear the term “antisemitism” and I strongly believe we should stop using it as something equivalent to hatred against Jewish (code for Zionist) people.
While many folks were distracted by chatter around this term yesterday, over 100 people were murdered by Israel in Gaza.
The story is Palestine, the story is genocide. The story is the absolute annihilation of Gaza & the silencing of anyone supporting Palestinian liberation. Don’t let them distract you. Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Second, a roundup of reading/listening related to Palestine, Empire, and our current hellscape:
If you’ve talked to me IRL in the past month, I probably told you I was obsessed with Ussama Makdisi’s (relatively recent if 2019 is recent) book, Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (UC Press, 2019) - this book does such incredible work reframing how we think about, talk about, and understand sectarianism in the SWANA (South West Asian and North Africa) region (and Ussama has an earlier book called The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon if you - like me - are a total nerd and have fun reading academic history). As someone who once made somewhat uninformed claims about the Ottoman Empire, this book gave me the tools I need to speak about Palestine (and the surrounding region) before the establishment of the Zionist State.
Ussama was on a bunch of great podcasts in the past year and a half talking about Age of Coexistence but my favorite conversation was a two-part interview Daniel Denvir did on The Dig podcast in December 2023 and January 2024 - I highly recommend it.
(Note - Someday I’ll listen to the six-episode Thawra series but that day has not yet come….)
Also, Ussama and his brothers, Saree and Karim Makdisi, (both scholars with incredible writing about Palestine - Saree - and the United Nations - Karim,) have a great podcast called Makdisi Street, which platforms really great and necessary interviews with some of the most important figures thinking and writing about Palestine and the genocide right now. I highly recommend it.
Other podcasts I listen to on the regular:
The Electronic Intifada podcast and livestream
On the Line with Samira Mohyeddin
Real Talk with Mohamed Hashem at MEE
The Palestine Pod with Lara E. and Mikey B.
This is Palestine from the IMEU
Another Education is Possible with Jordan Corson
Save the Olive Tree with Omar Akhter
I’m tired and I’m sure I’m missing things - I’ll add my omissions next week.
What are you listening to? Let us know in the comments and I’ll highlight them next week.
Another book I’m currently obsessed with is Hafsa Kanjwal’s Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building Under Indian Occupation (Stanford University Press, 2023). This book was high up on my TBR pile and I finally prioritized it after the disinformation circulating in the wake of the Pahalgam attacks on April 22nd. I recommend you read Hafsa’s book to understand the historical context of Kashmir as an occupied territory and then sign up for her workshop, Kashmir’s Freedom Struggle, on Thursday, June 12th, 6-7:30pm EST - this is sponsored through Workshops4Gaza, an incredible platform where scholars, writers, and theorists (in addition to many others) donate free workshops as a way to raise money for The Sameer Project (this work inspired my Substack). You can also buy books through them and Open Poetry Emporium and all the proceeds go to mutual aid.
Also, inspired by Workshops4Gaza is the Sudan Solidarity Collective Workshops4Sudan - another great mutual aid project that raises money for mutual aid and recognizes all liberation struggles as deeply intwined. Please support their incredible work by taking classes and sending money to Sudan mutual aid initiatives.
Lastly, a note on reading (this is entirely about fiction so ignore if you are not interested in reading fiction these days, although I would also argue that we all really need to be reading fiction these days because this is a way of engaging possibilities and ways of thinking beyond our own imagination. Something that is so essential right now):
Friend and comrade (and reader!) Chandra noted how hard it is for her (and so many people) to read this past year. HARD SAME. It’s been really really difficult for me to focus on anything these past 20 months, as my attention is always mostly on Gaza, in Palestine, on the news, and trapped in the hellscape of social media. So I thought I’d write a multi-part, multi-week set of posts (inspired by Chandra) on how I am reading these days. Maybe it’ll be helpful for you, maybe it will lead you to believe I am even more nuts than you thought. Both of those things work! Most of us are just doing the best we can.
This week I’m focusing on audiobooks. Audiobooks are saving me. Especially with plot-driven fiction, I’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks. I got into this habit during COVID, when my eyes felt shot after a day of Zoom teaching/meetings. At the end of long teaching days, I would listen to an audiobook while I went on a walk (sometimes for an hour or so). I returned to this habit of listening in the Spring of 2022, while recovering from a pretty horrible concussion. All I could do was lie in the dark with my eyes closed, so audiobooks once again were my salvation. I highly recommend audiobooks (I like to listen while I walk my dog, run errands, ride the subway, do laundry, etc - I cannot sit still and listen, I need to be doing something) as a particular form of reading. I used to love listening while driving but I live in Brooklyn now and don’t rely on a car to get around.
Some of my favorite recent audiobooks:
I’m currently listening to Annie Bot by Sierra Greer. Stay tuned but, so far, the narration is great and I’m hooked.
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson - I’m obsessed with this book and recommend it to everyone. It’s such a helpful guide for this moment - the story follows several generations of a Dakota family in rural Minnesota as they live and die and survive an ongoing genocide. It’s their relationship to each other and to the land that holds the story together and the way it spoke to the genocide in Gaza and the relationship Palestinians have with their land (unlike Israeli settlers, who - like white capitalist interests in Minnesota, see the land only as a space of extraction) felt profoundly resonant.
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline - I did not love this book quite as much as The Marrow Thieves (also by Dimaline, you should absolutely read it, I think about it regularly) but this contemporary rendering of a Métis werewolf story is suer satisfying and propulsory.
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko - another absolute favorite (and you should 100% also read The Leavers) - brilliant novel about community, fascism, surveillance, and how to make art in this dystopic moment. I love everything Lisa writes.
I just finished A.E. Osworth’s new novel, Awakened and, after finishing it, felt great despair because I was missing my new friends so much. So now I’m listening to the audiobook, which is amazing. Yes, I realize I am nuts. Often I make new friends in fiction, I miss them when the book ends, and I immediately start the book again in a different format (sometimes I read first and listen second, sometimes it’s the other way around). Yes, I had an imaginary friend as a child. Yes, this is all totally normal. And anyway, this book is so smart and fun and sexy and absolutely what we all need right now (take away - community will save us. Also, magic, which is maybe another word for community). The story follows a group of queer/trans-identified witches and is a big F you to that horrible TERF who shall not be named. Also, F everyone in the US who is weaponizing the law to dehumanize/attack/criminalize trans folks as a way to shore up political power and help turn this country into an even more Christian white supremacist heteronormative theocracy. There is a special place in hell for you all.
I’m a huge Katie Kitamura fan and inhaled her new novel, Audition, in one sitting (when I tell you I sat, with the hardcover in my lap, undistracted for three hours while I binge-read it, that should tell you all you need to know in this moment - the book is wild and addictive and destabilizing in the best way). So then I went back and listened to the audiobook versions of her first two novels, A Separation and Intimacies (I had read them in hard cover years ago when they came out). Both are excellent audiobooks and I highly recommend them.
Whew. That’s a lot.
Next week I will provide a roundup of other (non-audio version) books, as well as essays/news sites. Thanks for reading. And as a reminder - please consider donating to The Sameer Project if you have some extra funds. Also, if you are supporting other mutual aid initiatives, please post in comments and I will boost.
Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea. Let everything we do be in service of liberation.