A sneak peek at Lenna Jawdat's 70,000, a visceral and inventive book that blends archival photos of Palestine with poetry.
Jawdat's work was inspired by the removal of approximately 70,000 books from Palestinian homes and private libraries before and during the events of the 1948 Nakba. Of those books, most have not been returned; about 6,000 remain housed in Israeli national collections, where they are largely inaccessible to Palestinians.
The collection will release July 7th, but you can pre-order your own copy here.
âA precious poetess of Palestinian descent excavates the archeology of loss and erasure with a creative cri de coeur, meticulously researched and illustrated. She distills striking historical landmarks into a poignant tableau of pain. Lenna Jawdat mines cultural symbols that sustain overlooked Palestinian identity and roots, weaving them into a novel format, breaking the wounds of invisibility and suppressed slights wide open. Now that the world is watching, this is a tender, honest and unique gem of a book.â â Nora Boustany, former Middle East Washington Post correspondent and columnist
âLenna Jawdatâs generous hybrid collection is part diary, part historical record, part ritual, and all ode. I feel deep gratitude for this love-act. Through her meditation Jawdat undertakes a transformative and laborious accounting which poses rippling questions: On stolen land, who counts? Who might never be accounted for? In the face of mammoth lossâof a people, of stories, of homeâJawdat chooses the powerful combination of ink and vulnerability. Slowly, steadfastly, she lays bare her inherited trauma alongside her âinherited resilience,â making legible whatâs been invisibilized, vowing âI will document them somehow / Each number a tombstone / Something to return to.â Long after Iâm done reading, I feel the reverberations of her hajj. Her markings evoke not just a graveyard, but a body returning to what it loves.â â Shira Erlichman, author of Odes to Lithium
âWhat is the legacy of diaspora? How does one cure homesickness without recourse to home? How do we continue to live with our grief even as the causes of our grief are ongoing? âSometimes the things we are witnessing are too much to bear,â Jawdat writes. And yet, we go on because we must, because we can, through the community we carry with us, that history would erase. That is the work of the poet: to remember the humanity behind the history too easily corrupted, and to remember the worlds lived and dreamed. To remind us all that if we inherit trauma in the body, we also inherit resilience, and we forge the inheritance of those who follow after. A tender work, most urgently needed.â â Abigail Chabitnoy, author of In the Current Where Drowning is Beautiful
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