A review by letsgolesbians
The Tent Generations: Palestinian Poems by Mohammed Sawaie

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad

5.0

i realized the palestinian poetry i’ve read has been from ~2005 through now and focused on the western diaspora. the tent generations is a collection of 20th century poets, including people who survived the nakba and remained inside palestine after israel’s creation, their kids, palestinians in gaza, and palestinians in the west bank. poems were written by women and men (from what i read, all poets identified as one of the binary genders) from different educational backgrounds. 

themes include yearning for freedom, a demand for equality with other citizens of the state, missing palestinians in other places, hope, and a connection to other struggles. poems look at massacres like kufr qasim, where in 1956 israeli border guards massacred 49 palestinian farm workers on their return home from their fields because of a curfew that had been imposed that night, of which the farmers were not aware. 

there’s an intro section that covers the “social and cultural life of those palestinians who remained in israel in 1948” including a brief history of poetry. the arab tradition of poetry recitation and listening to the medium in a communal setting was further utilized when access to print materials decreased because of poverty and border issues and literacy was low. poetic festivals, or mahrajans, became literacy and political demonstrations. 

grateful that the lapl had an ecopy of this!

cws: death; genocide; grief; violence

photo review here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7k0UrQxMwh/?igsh=MWQ1ZGUxMzBkMA==

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Grief, and Colonisation