Writer, editor and publisher Marcia Lynx Qualey remarked that “the literature currently in the spotlight, in many languages, is Palestinian” while accepting Ottoway Award for the Promotion of International Literature in 2024. As Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues, Marcia says that the demand for Palestinian literature has grown exponentially. Submissions to prizes and magazines have ballooned, as have requests from publishers asking Marcia’s advice on various manuscripts. These are not works necessarily written by Palestinians, but that “deal with Palestine in some way,” she adds. Historically, writers, translators and editors have struggled to get Palestinian writing published, so this should be good news; but unfortunately, Marcia says it should give us pause. While some publishers are certainly trying to engage from a solidarity perspective, many approach it with an extractive motive and to capitalize on the disaster. Luckily, Marcia explains how readers might discern between the books that might be exploiting the moment, and those that might come from a place of activism, and a desire to amplify Palestinian voices.

In this wide-ranging conversation Marcia also offers insights into this and several other problems that plague publishing about Palestine at a time when Palestinians, Palestinian culture and Palestinian history itself is being erased before our eyes. She explains how the Publishers for Palestine came about— a coalition we are proud to be part of as the Radical Books Collective. P4P’s growth is the industry’s overwhelming desire to decenter big corporate publishing. Marcia speaks about the shifts in Arabic-language publishing with the coming of new book fairs, prizes and presses located in Qatar and UAE — though she worries that they seem to be imitating Western corporate conglomerates, after all.

Finally, Marcia speaks of the ways in which ArabLit, the digital magazine and ArabLit Quarterly, the print magazine— that she was instrumental in creating— have attempted to provide material support, and foster community for writers, poets and translators trapped inside Gaza. With people in Gaza atomized, and with their lives completely fractured, putting writers, poets and translators in contact with each other remains the first priority for ArabLit. Their most recent issue on “Grief” illustrates that grief and mourning is not about being “alone and sad, but to be together and to propel ourselves forward.”

At this moment of bitter despair, Marcia insists that editors and publishers find alternative routes to create structures of doing business that might be decolonial, abolitionist and anti-capitalist. “We need these new ways for talking about Palestinian literature, not these old extractive, profit-seeking, iconizing, boiling down ways of it. I think it involves making partnerships, it involves changing the way that we do business.”

Further reading:

“The Landscape around Us”: Marcia Lynx Qualey’s Ottaway Award Acceptance Speech

https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2024-06/marcia-lynx-qualeys-ottaway-award-acceptance-speech/

Arab Lit Quarterly, the GRIEF issue: https://arablit.gumroad.com/l/glwto?layout=profile

ArabLit, the digital magazine: https://arablit.org/

Publishers for Palestine: https://publishersforpalestine.org/

The feature-length documentary A State of Passion (2024) co-directed by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi takes us deeper into the unfolding war on Gaza through the eyes of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah. For almost two years, the extraordinary violence in Gaza has been broadcast live on our screens, even as those who strive to document it are being assassinated right in front of our eyes. Yet, the witnessing, documenting, archiving and narrating of the genocide of Palestinians continues, more and more from unlikely sources. Some of the most rigorous accounts of what is happening on the ground are coming from doctors and healthcare workers, many of whom have paid a harrowning price for speaking out.

Documentary filmmakers Carol and Muna found themselves wrought with distress as they watched the bombardment of Gaza in October 2023, and realized that it was unprecedented in its volume and genocidal goal. When they heard that their old friend Dr. Abu-Sittah was getting on a plane to Gaza, they asked if they could start documenting his trip through images, Whatsapp texts and voice messages. They asked him to stay in touch in whatever way he could.

Trained as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Abu-Sittah has been moonlighting as a trauma surgeon for several years, and has made trips to Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq and his native Palestine over the last two decades. But his sixth trip to Gaza was different and Dr. Abu-Sittah saw firsthand the start of Israel’s war on hospitals. These hospital bombardments and the media’s gaslighting narratives about it altered something in Dr. Abu-Sittah himself. He began the work of witnessing and narrating in earnest, sending urgent missives about what was happening on the ground through social media. Eventually, he decided that his medical expertise was not as helpful with hospital infrastructure destroyed and no medical supplies being allowed in. After 43 days, he returned to London and decided it was time to pick up the microphone and take a public stance about what he witnessed. “I cannot unsee what I saw,” he told Carol and Muna.

A State of Passion, however, is not the story of one man but the story of Gaza, the filmmakers insist. We get loving glimpses into the doctor’s family, his eloquent and fiercely revolutionary wife Deema, who is from Gaza, and his two young boys who are proud both of their father, and to be Palestinian.

In the Radical Futures interview, the filmmakers speak about how the documentary evolved, the tough decisions about structures, timelines, and tone as well as the deteriorating situation in Gaza where the healthcare community and hospital infrastructure is being deliberately targeted.

Further reading:

Trailer for A State of Passion: https://vimeo.com/1029273602

Arrange a screening at your institution: https://state-of-passion.com/screenings

Review by Ruwon Teodros: https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1657141

The Situated Testimony of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah (Forensic Architecture) https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/when-it-stopped-being-a-war

Hosted by Bhakti Shringarpure

Produced by Radical Books Collective and the Polis Project.