An anthology that celebrates the power of culture in Palestinian resistance, with selections of memoir, short stories, essays, book reviews, personal narrative, poetry, and art.

Includes twenty-five black-and-white illustrations by Palestinian artists.

The Arabic word sumd is often loosely translated as steadfastness or standing fast. It is, above all, a Palestinian cultural value of everyday perseverance in the face of Israeli occupation. Sumd is both a personal and collective commitment; people determine their own lives, despite the environment of constant oppressions imposed upon them.

This anthologyspans the 20th and 21st centuriesof Palestinian cultural history, and highlights writing from 20212024.The collection of writing and art features work from forty-six contributors including:

• Dispatches from Hossam Madhoun,co-founder of Gaza’s Theatre for Everybody, as he survivesthe post-October2023 war on Gaza;
• Novelist Ahmed Masoud with Application 39, a sci-fi short story about a Dystopian bid for the Olympics;
• Sara Roy and Ivar Ekeland with The New Politics of Exclusion: Gaza as Prologue, an analysis of Israels divide and conquer policies of fragmentation;
• Historian Ilan Papp with a review of Tahrir Hamdis book, Imagining Palestine, in which he unpacks the relationship between culture and resistance;
• Essayist Lina Mounzer with Palestine and the Unspeakable, an offering on the language used to dehumanize Palestinians;
• And poetry by the next generation of poets who have inherited the mantle of the late Mahmoud Darwish (19412008).

The essays, stories, poetry, art and personal narrative collected in Sumd: A New Palestinian Reader is a rich riposte to those who would denigrate Palestinians aspirations for a homeland. It also serves as a timely reminder of cultures power and importance during occupation and war.

Paperback | 400 pages | 5.49″ x 8.22″