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Welcome
November 2024
To Friends of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now:
This issue has been ready to be shared since early November, before the presidential election in the United States. Because of technical issues with the email platform we use, we haven't been able to send it out until now. A number of events listed below might have already taken place by the time you receive this. We apologize. We thought you might like to know of them, in any case, and can request recordings or other related material if available.
Welcome! In this issue, we have curated a selection of novels that grapple with human rights and social justice concerns in courageous and creative ways. Though only the tiniest sample of such fiction available, these books (in English, some of which have been translated from other languages) will, we hope, bring you insights into communities’ struggles with which you may be unfamiliar. Or they might indeed resonate deeply with your own lived experience. We trust they will also inspire you, as you explore stories of disparate peoples nurturing camaraderie, and exhibiting agency and dignity in the face of often-dangerous assaults.
We chose to open our newsletter with a celebration of books, harnessing the might and energy of the “Freedom to Read Day of Action” which was observed around the United States on the 19th of October this year as a way to galvanize the public in response to book banning and censorship, both of which have been on the rise in recent years. The American Library Association notes that in 2023, more than 4,000 books were targeted for removal from public and school library shelves, most of these publications representing voices and stories of people of color, and of those who identify as LGBTQ+. Outraged by this attack on people’s right to choose what to read (and what to have their families read), and on people’s need to see themselves reflected in the pages of materials they peruse, and to see and understand others as well, individuals and community groups showed up en masse at rallies and other events on October 19th throughout the country to demand free access to information and knowledge, both fundamental to democracy.
Censorship is implemented and book bans are imposed worldwide, not just in the U.S., stymying people’s right to read and to think critically.
The first book on our list, in fact, deals with the censorship of books in an unnamed fictional land. Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library, just published in English earlier this year, transports us to a place in which imagination itself is a crime. Al-Essa is Kuwaiti; the other novelists whose books we feature are Aboriginal Australian, Argentinian, Chinese-American, Jamaican-British, Palestinian, Sierra Leonean, Sudanese, and Uyghur.
Filipina theater practitioner and peace and social change activist Dessa Quesada Palm is the focus of our artist spotlight. The first “AHA! project” (Arts for Humanity Autobiographies) interviewee for IMPACT, Inc. (Transforming Conflict with Arts and Culture), Dessa speaks about her life and life’s work as a performer, educator, and advocate for social justice, much of the time while a denizen of an authoritarian state.
Please be sure to check out our lists of upcoming events (conferences, webinars and more), and opportunities and resources (including a new educational program, plus books, films, podcasts, and articles), all confronting pressing global or local issues and challenges.
We close this welcome letter by noting the recent announcement of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. This year’s Peace award has gone to Nihon Hidankyo, an organization based in Japan whose work, through oral histories, witness testimonies, and public appeals, calls for nuclear disarmament. These atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshiima and Nagasaki have been bringing attention to the horrors of nuclear war for decades, and, in the words of the Nobel Committee, “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” And the award for Literature went to Han Kang, of South Korea, the first South Korean and the first Asian woman to win this prize. According to a New York Times article, Ms. Han’s stories are “deeply tied to South Korea’s tumultuous modern history, which has been marked by the division of the Korean Peninsula, a war, military dictatorship and a long and often bloody struggle for democracy and labor rights.” We applaud all the awardees, and their courageous work.
We are grateful to all of you, as always, for your commitment to peacebuilding, and to the arts.
Toni Shapiro-Phim and Armine Avetisyan
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Novels Engaging With Issues Of Human Rights And Social Justice
Read on to discover books in which creative writers evoke complex, sometimes harrowing circumstances, and the nuance, fear, and courage behind the choices that people make when their lives, loved ones, communities, indeed their worlds and aspects of their identity and dignity, are at risk.
The Book Censor’s Library
by Bothayna Al-Essa (2024), translated from Arabic
“The new book censor hasn’t slept soundly in weeks. By day, he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish—allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night, pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter, and the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture. Reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees, Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell’s 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka. The Book Censor’s Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.”
Off the Books
by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier (2024)
“Mĕi Brown is a recent Dartmouth [University] dropout working as a private chauffeur with a dodgy roster of clients—one of whom hires her to drive all the way across the country... [This one particular client’s] insistence on unusually frequent breaks leads Mĕi to confront him about his precious luggage, and once his secret is revealed she begins to see the world in a very different light. Frazier expertly weaves historic and contemporary injustices faced by Chinese Americans and Uyghurs through this fast-paced, propulsive book, which is at its most powerful when depicting the way Mĕi’s family navigates life after catastrophe… A vital, enthralling debut in which devastating social commentary is delivered with a wink.”
The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang
by Perhat Tursun (2022), translated from Uyghur
“The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state... [It] is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work… Perhat Tursun [the author] is a leading Uyghur writer, poet, and social critic from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He has published many short stories and poems as well as three novels... In 2018, he was detained by the Chinese authorities and was reportedly given a sixteen-year prison sentence.”
Bad Girls
by Camila Sosa Villada (2022), translated from Spanish
“The novel… is a first-person coming-of-age story told by Camila, who is born poor and a boy in a town in the hills of Cordoba Province [Argentina], and whose parents violently reject her when, as a teenager, she starts dressing as a girl. At the age of eighteen, she moves to the city to attend [university]… where, by night, to support herself, she becomes a sex worker. Her story unfolds as she finds a group of more experienced travestis… who teach and protect her, and with whom she shares daily doses of cruelty, pain, and humiliation but also of solidarity and joy.”
Against the Loveless World
by Susan Abulhawa (2019)
“As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the seventies to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. [It is a book of] subversive humor and moral ambiguity…”
Edo’s Souls
by Stella Gaitano (2019), translated from Arabic
“When a young Lucy-Eghino, who is coming of age in a 1970s village in southern Sudan, is beset by rumours of approaching violence, she has no choice but to flee - first to Juba, then northwards to Khartoum. Marco, a gentle young father, wages a daily battle to keep his family together while avoiding friction with any northerners. Peter, a soldier unsure of where his loyalties lie, is forced to carry out night raids searching for bands of rebels.”
The White Girl
by Tony Birch (2019)
“The White Girl is a black and white story about Australian colonialism’s malevolent legacies, and the courage, strength and dignity of Indigenous resistance. It’s a story about strong women, with whom Birch’s life has been blessed. It is also a profound allegory of good and evil, and a deep exploration of human interaction, black and white, alternately beautiful and tender, cruel and unsettling.”
Radiance of Tomorrow
by Ishmael Beah (2015)
“… Imperi, as glimpsed in the book’s opening pages, appears as a desiccated wasteland, a collection of charred houses and strewn bones, the site of an abrupt massacre seven years earlier when rebels attacked the village without warning. Such atrocities were commonplace across Sierra Leone during its notoriously brutal civil war, which stretched from 1991 to 2002, causing some 70,000 deaths and separating more than two million people from their homes. Radiance of Tomorrow is not a story of exodus, though, but rather a rare look at the phenomena of homecoming and reclamation, written with the moral urgency of a parable and the searing precision of a firsthand account.”
Nothing’s Mat
by Erna Brodber (2014)
“Nothing’s Mat is told by a black British teenager – ‘every black girl’ – for she has no name until the very last chapters when she is teasingly called ‘Princess’ by her husband. Somewhere in the 1950s, London-based Princess is allowed to complete her sixth-form final exams by writing a long paper on [her] West Indian family instead of sitting an exam. She thinks this a godsend and that all she has to do is to interview her parents. Her father tries to help her with his side but they both find that their kin will not fit into the standard anthropological template… In Jamaica, much as her middle-class black Jamaican grandparents and her parents in England might not have liked it, Princess meets and spends time with her obscure cousin Nothing, called Conut. Conut introduces Princess to a plant that obeys certain divine principles and is available to humans to make artefacts for their comfort. Accordingly, they begin to make a mat and as they twist straw and bend it into intricate shapes, Conut tells her the family history so that their creation becomes for her a mat of anthropological template… This work is at once a fictional family history and a comment on anthropological methodology and African systems of thought.”
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Artist Spotlight - Dessa Quesada Palm
We’re delighted to share an interview with Dessa Quesada Palm, recorded and originally published as part of IMPACT, Inc.’s “AHA! Project,” documenting individuals’ journeys connecting arts and culture to conflict transformation in diverse contexts around the world.
“My name is Dessa Quesada Palm. I live in a city called Dumaguete on the island of Negros in the Philippines. Ever since I was 13 years old, I’ve been involved in theatre work. Now, I work for a group called Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts (YATTA) as one of its mentors. At the same time, I teach in the College of Performing and Visual Arts of Silliman University, and I’m a facilitator and advocate for peace and social transformation."
“I was profoundly influenced by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. This book shook a lot of notions about theatre having a distinct separation between the artists and the spectators. It describes theatre as a process, a platform for conversation, and a rehearsal for change.”
Read the full story.
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Daria Pugachova, 2023
Photo Credit: Hosein Danesh
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Upcoming Events
Build Peace 2024 Conference
November 14-16
Manila, Philippines
“Welcome to Build Peace 2024, the 11th annual conference on emergent challenges to peace in a digital era, and peacebuilding innovations to address these challenges. The conference theme is a reflection of the importance of grassroots perspectives to frontier issues in peacebuilding and conflict in Asia.”
Series of “Art in Conflict” Talks
Center for Art and Peacebuilding, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
“CAP organises a monthly talk called ‘Art in Conflict’, which addresses fundamental questions faced by practitioners such as: ‘What are the specific qualities and possibilities of art in conflict areas?’ ‘How can multi-layered projects be realised?’ and ’Where is the limit of what is possible?’ These and other pressing questions should not only be discussed inside of the artasfoundation but should rather be opened up to a larger audience of interested people.”
Wednesday, November 13
Art in Conflict: Theatre Initiatives in Times of War with Mira Sack (ZHdK, Switzerland), Lena Saade Gebran (USEK's University, Lebanon) and Shebli Albau (theatre maker, Switzerland)
Wednesday, December 11
Art in Conflict: War, the Economy, and the Arts, with Robert Bachmann (Public Eye, Switzerland)
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Art in Conflict: ‘Conflict Engagement’ through Art, with Dana Caspersen (conflict analyst, dancer, USA)
View more events.
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Opportunities, Announcements and Resources
Educational Program: Study the Intersection of Art and Africana Studies with the Crossroads Cohort at Tulane University
Deadline: January 10, 2025
Applications are now open for the inaugural cohort of this new interdisciplinary graduate program based in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
“The master’s-level program allows students to pursue graduate study at the intersection of Africana studies and art and is set to welcome its inaugural cohort in fall 2025. Mindful of the sense of isolation often experienced by students — especially Black students and other students of color — who work at the intersection of these fields during their graduate study, the two-year program is designed around a cohort model and will accept at least three students every other year. Alongside individualized courses of study, Crossroads Cohort students participate in dedicated seminar courses together and collaborate to develop a capstone project such as a small exhibition, symposium, or innovative public program as the culmination of their graduate experience. Crossroads offers tracks for both art historians and studio artists; students who complete the program can earn either an interdisciplinary MA in Africana Studies and Art History, an MA in Africana Studies and an MFA in Studio Art, or an MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Africana Studies. All admitted students will receive a full tuition waiver, a graduate student living stipend, paid summer internship opportunities relevant to the field, funding for the capstone project, and access to additional research funds.”
Peace and Dialogue Initiative for U.S. University Campuses: Atidna International
“We at Atidna International fundamentally believe that Jews/Israelis and Arabs/Palestinians are one family, not inherent enemies, and we believe that such a humanizing notion can be revealed by creating joint and civil spaces for interaction between our two peoples. The name Atidna combines the Hebrew word ‘Atid’ for future with the Arabic suffix ‘na’ for our to hence mean 'our future.' Atidna has been in existence since April 2022 and we seek to establish chapters at every campus across the nation! We host two basic types of events at Atidna chapters: dialogue sessions and peace events. Atidna dialogue sessions bring together both peoples to have free and open conversations about anything and everything pertaining to Israel and Palestine on campuses.” Find out about chapters at universities around the U.S., or about starting a new one by visiting their website.
Peace and Dialogue Initiative: Listening from the Heart
"The Parents Circle – Families Forum is a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization made up of more than 700 bereaved families. Their common bond is that they have lost a close family member to the conflict. But instead of choosing revenge, they have chosen a path of reconciliation. American Friends of the Parents Circle – Families Forum shares the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the American public in order to foster a peace and reconciliation process." Their newly-launched program with videos and a facilitator’s guide nurtures deep, compassionate listening – "connecting hearts across the Israeli Palestinian conflict..."
"Listening from the Heart is a transformative program offering communities a chance to engage in meaningful dialogue about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a human perspective. Through compelling videos of personal narratives from bereaved Israelis and Palestinians, and a comprehensive Facilitator’s Guide, Listening from the Heart fosters understanding, empathy, and reconciliation.”
Explore more resources and opportunities.
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Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
Global Community Engagement, COMPACT
Brandeis University
415 South Street | MS 086 | Waltham, MA 02454-9110
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