This is a book to be read slowly, deliberately. Though the writing is rich, varied, hard, and lyrical, some of it breathtaking, a treasure house of the sort you want to read out loud just to feel it in the mouth, the prose and poetry found here shape a portrait of the tragedy of two peoples, the Palestinians, whose lives, held so unimportant by the world, daily become more intolerable, and the Israelis, who, through their government’s monstrous policies, are responsible.

To read the rest of the review, visit Consequence Magazine.

To read the full story, visit Tin House.

At an earlier gathering, a few contributors to the book were photographed, and one said, “What is there to smile about–” in reference to the situation in Palestine. And Freeman reflected that in her own extensive travels, “some of the warmest, wittiest, most joyful people I’ve ever met I met in Palestine,” and they had told her: Don’t cry for us. “Go back and do whatever you can do.” This book, she said, “is that can-do for me.”

To watch videos of the event, visit Mondoweiss.

Freeman does believe that it is a duty to write about those who have been deliberately silenced: “My goal is not to have a fight with every person who disagrees, but to gather the people who might feel differently and have them speak. I think that writers should speak because we expect this world to pay attention to the things we say so it might improve us to pay attention to the world also and to do for it what we can. I don’t by any means think this book is going to stop the demolishing of the Bedouin villages or the arrest of the children, but it is a way of changing a corner of the world where we have some power to change something and I believe it is the responsibility of every person to do that in whatever place they find themselves.”

To read the rest of the review, visit Middle East Monitor.