On this edition of Your Call, we discuss Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture, co-edited by Mahmoud Muna, Matthew Teller, and supported by Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia.
Muna and Teller write that Daybreak in Gaza, which was completed from March to May 2024, "is an attempt to amplify marginalized voices and illuminate hidden histories to evoke the spirit of a place under attack through the lives of its people. We contacted hundreds of people: not just Gaza’s poets and writers, but also its doctors and shopkeepers, its farmers and office workers. At a time of profound anguish, bereavement and loss, we found that Gazans – even those surviving starvation and bombardment inside Gaza – were not only willing to talk, but often desperate to do so.
In many cases, we don’t know what has happened to our Gaza contributors since they spoke to us. We can only hope they have survived."
Guests:
Mahmoud Muna, owner of Jerusalem’s celebrated Educational Bookshop, published in the London Review of Books and Jerusalem Quarterly, recently published the first Arabic edition of Granta Magazine, and co-editor of Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture
Matthew Teller, UK-based author and broadcaster, published in the Times, BBC, Guardian, Independent, and FT, co-editor of Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture, and author of Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City
Juliette Touma, global communications director for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, covering Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and closely involved with Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture
Resources:
The Guardian: Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war
+972 Magazine: Bearing witness to Gaza as a place of life
The National: 'We had to write as fast as Israel was killing people': The story behind Daybreak in Gaza
Moment: Mahmoud Muna Launched His New Book At My House. Seven Days Later Israeli Police Arrested Him
ArtReview: Why Israel’s Raid on a Palestinian Bookshop Matters
The Washington Post: Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population
