Book Size: 6" x 9"
Pages: 120
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781623719784
Imprint: Olive Branch Press
Edition: 1
Release date: Spring 2019
Categories: Books on Palestine, LiteratureMaking Mirrors
Writing/Righting by and for Refugees
By Jehan Bseiso & Becky Thompson
$ 20“Bringing together stunning work by new voices as well as internationally acclaimed poets, this necessary and deeply humane anthology offers a circumspect approach to displacement and its varieties of experience. Equally moving is the number of countries the poets come from: the book generates a map of resistance to oppression that covers much of the globe. Its publication firmly identifies this country’s place on that map and reminds us that we must open our eyes, read, and resist.” — John Hennessy, author of Bridge and Tunnel and Coney Island Pilgrims
About this book
A poetry anthology that illuminates exile and displacement.
Making Mirrors began on two continents, envisioned by Palestinian poet and aid worker, Jehan Bseiso, and Becky Thompson, a US-based poet changed by months of greeting refugees after their perilous journey across the Aegean Sea.
This anthology uses mirrors to reflect imagistic connections that allow us to see ourselves in each other, those on rafts and those standing on the shore, those waiting/writing in detention and those writing from places of relative safety, those who lift their children to the sky and those whose bodies are at the bottom of the sea.
Making Mirrors offers a poetics of belonging- to the earth, family, and memories packed into backpacks. The poems go beyond refugee/citizen binaries and illuminate exile as a forced/creative space.
As the refugee crisis fades from the front page of newspapers, this collection is a plea against historical amnesia and inertia; the poems are an antidote that reaches beyond despair to renewed action.
Contributors include: Abbas Sheikhi, Abu Bakr Khaal, Adele Ne Jame, Ahmad Almallah, Ahmed Qaisania, Angela Farmer, Baha' Budair, Becky Thompson, Bronwen Griffiths, Eman Abedelhadi, Fadwa Soleiman, Fady Joudah, Fatima Al Hassan, Fouad Mohammed Fouad, Gbenga Adesina, Golan Haji, Hajer Almosleh, Hayan Charara, Ibtisam Barakat, Jehan Bseiso, Jose A. Alcantara, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Marilyn Hacker, Marisa Frasca, Merna Ann Hecht, Mohsen Emadi, Mootacem Bellah Mhiri, Naomi Shihab Nye, Nathalie Handal, Nawwar Kamal Al Hassani, Nisreen Aj, Nora Barghati, Omar Mousa Alsayyed, Rewa Zeinati, Ruth Awad, Saad Abdullah, Sanaa Shuaybe, Sara Abou Rashed, Sara Saleh, Sharif S. Elmusa, Sholeh Wolpe, Zeina Azzam, Zeina Hashem Beck, and Zoe Holman.
About the authors
Jehan Bseiso is a Palestinian poet and researcher who has been working with Doctors without Borders since 2008. Her co-authored book I Remember My Name (2016) was winner of the Palestine Book Awards.
Becky Thompson, Ph.D., is a poet, human rights activist, yogi, and professor. She is the author of several books, most recently, Teaching with Tenderness. Since 2015, Becky has been traveling to Greece, meeting rafts, documenting human rights violations, and teaching poetry workshops.
Reviews
“A stunning achievement A searing book reframing the refugee crisis. What I appreciate most about this volume is its active recognition that a capacity for feeling poetry, thinking poetically, and crafting poetic text is present much more widely than just among those who dare call themselves poets The editor’s goal was to work against the deadening flat description of suffering to refugees, to highlight their creativity.” — Ashwini Tambe
“This slim volume allows us to grasp in a way we could not otherwise with statistics.” — Angela Davis
“These individual insights not only offer a glimpse of life lived in peril; they are also a testimony of emotion that is vividly portrayed through the refugees’ coming to terms with their non-belonging.” — Middle East Monitor
“Bringing together stunning work by new voices as well as internationally acclaimed poets, this necessary and deeply humane anthology offers a circumspect approach to displacement and its varieties of experience. Equally moving is the number of countries the poets come from: the book generates a map of resistance to oppression that covers much of the globe. Its publication firmly identifies this country’s place on that map and reminds us that we must open our eyes, read, and resist.” — John Hennessy, author of Bridge and Tunnel and Coney Island Pilgrims
“[The book] puts in lyric conversation the pain, suffering, beauty, and genius of people of Nigeria, Eritrea, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan and all of the places that refuse to be forgotten or marginalized. The images conjured [are] elegant and powerful.” — Professor Ismail Rashid, Vassar College
About the Author
Becky Thompson, Ph.D., is a poet, human rights activist, yogi, and professor. She is the author of several books, most recently, Teaching with Tenderness. Since 2015, Becky has been traveling to Greece, meeting rafts, documenting human rights violations, and teaching poetry workshops.
Additional information
| Author | Bseiso , Jehan |
|---|---|
| Author 2 | Thompson , Becky |
| Edition | 1 |
| Inprint | Olive Branch Press |
| Pages | 256 |
| Type | PB |
| Release date | Fall 2018 |
| Author Home | Rhode Island , USA |
| Subtitle | Writing/Righting by and for Refugees |
| Format | 6" x 9" |
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