My name is Sarah Mahmoud. I was born twenty-eight years ago in Jabalia, northern Gaza. My father was a teacher, and my mother a devoted homemaker, who held our family together with love and patience. I was the youngest of five sisters—Dalal, Hazar, Ghada, and two others. In those days, our home . . .
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This piece first appeared on African Feminism. As people living at the intersection of multiple oppressions, legacies of slavery and colonialism, and neocolonial capture of our nations, we must remain extremely vigilant for erasure and appropriation of our voice and agency. African feminisms cannot exist in spaces where struggles of other colonized . . .
Read MoreJuly 26th was a day like many others in Gaza. I woke up at 8:00 a.m. to fetch four gallons of potable water from the truck that would come every day to the school where my family and I had been displaced. After completing that daily mission, I was already exhausted. I . . .
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A review of We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth, edited by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey The anthology We Are Not Numbers, The Voices of Gaza’s Youth, published by Interlink Books today, is a collection of essays by young Palestinian writers in Gaza, edited by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam . . .
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What if I were there? That one question is chasing me like the ticking of a clock. Gazans are getting killed in their homes, mosques, churches, streets – even on the beach. Even the cup of coffee, family gatherings, love, and laughter by the waves, all become targeted by Israel in a . . .
Read MoreJuly 25 marks the day I first opened my eyes to life. This year I turned twenty years old — nearly two of which were lost to war. I am not someone who enjoys loud, crowded parties, but I do love to share my special moments with those I value most. For . . .
Read MoreIt’s 5:50 in the morning, just ten minutes before the university bus is supposed to arrive. I should be rushing to catch it and head to my classes in Gaza, just like I used to every day. But today, I’m trapped in a nightmare from which I can’t awake. The alarm ringing . . .
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The final year of high school in Palestine, known as Tawjihi, has always symbolized more than just exams. It’s a year of dreams, a year in which every student’s aspirations meet their family’s ambitions. The future of a nation rests on the shoulders of our generation. But in Gaza, Tawjihi has become . . .
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After months of war in my neighborhood of Al-Shujaiya—a place that was once full of life and laughter—everything was gone. No homes, no people, no signs of the world we once knew. After the third invasion, it became a ghost town, buried in silence and rubble. During the genocide, before we had . . .
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Some of us were born into fire. Others into silence. But for us in Gaza—our first breath came with the taste of fear. The world met us with its back turned. Sometimes our pain, hunger, and fear get romanticized or turned into some kind of heroicnarrative—as if we chose this, or as . . .
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