A review by notoriousesr
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire by Jennifer Bing, Mike Merryman-Lotze, Jehad Abusalim

challenging dark hopeful slow-paced

3.75

Light in Gaza is a collection of essays by Palestinian writers aiming to, well, bring light to the Gazan experience and imagine a free future beyond apartheid and mass death.

This is an important collection. It took me many months to read, in bits and pieces when I felt I could manage it, but I’m infinitely glad I read it. Published about a year before the most recent (but certainly not first) Israeli campaign of violence against Gazan civilians, it paints a picture of a population in constant, vivid crisis, lives punctuated by extreme acts of violence and destruction. However, it also paints a hopeful future of what Gaza could be if allowed to breathe. Though there were some awkward tonal shifts between personal memoir-like essays and papers that belonged more in scholarly journals, there were enough stand-out pieces (“Gaza Asks: When Shall This Pass?” by the late Refaat Alareer and “People’s Light in Gaza’s Darkness” by Suhail Taha for two) that it’s still 4 out of 5 dreams.