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4.8 AVERAGE
4.8 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Letters From Gaza is a collection of poems and essays written by the people living in Palestine. This is a necessary read by all in order to bear witness to Israel’s displacement and genocide of Palestinians.
Each piece is an urgent testimony: grief woven with resistance, memory laced with mourning. The voices in this collection are not just telling their stories—they are reclaiming narrative power in a world that erases or distorts their truth.
To read Letters From Gaza is to refuse silence in the face of genocide. It is a moral act of listening, of sitting with discomfort, and acknowledging the human cost of settler colonialism and state violence.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.
Each piece is an urgent testimony: grief woven with resistance, memory laced with mourning. The voices in this collection are not just telling their stories—they are reclaiming narrative power in a world that erases or distorts their truth.
To read Letters From Gaza is to refuse silence in the face of genocide. It is a moral act of listening, of sitting with discomfort, and acknowledging the human cost of settler colonialism and state violence.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.
Big Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the advanced copy! I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own
'Letters from Gaza' is a difficult book to read, as it's an anthology of raw stories by people who experiencing the horrors of war and dangerous politics. A live description of history in the making, from people who don't want to be just numbers presented in the news as victims. And for that, I'm grateful that I've read their voices.
'Letters from Gaza' is a difficult book to read, as it's an anthology of raw stories by people who experiencing the horrors of war and dangerous politics. A live description of history in the making, from people who don't want to be just numbers presented in the news as victims. And for that, I'm grateful that I've read their voices.
emotional
informative
inspiring
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This is a collection of real-time short writings, compiled directly from writers dispersed throughout Gaza under displacement (the Afterword goes into more detail about the collaboration between translators, publisher, and the authors who put this book together).
Each piece in this has a unique tone with unfiltered and direct perspectives from Gazans themselves. I appreciated how the author of each piece had tiny bios describing who they are and what they did. Some of these writers have also been martyred. This book, in its entirety, humanizes the Palestinians. They are not just numbers and statistics. The collection comes together to represent their grief and resilience. The immense level of scholasticide suffered at the hands of Isra*l’s genoc*de is truly horrifying. So, a recurring theme throughout this book is that the act of writing will always be a tool of resistance.
This book struck so many chords within me. Each of the writings in this were truly impactful and reflective through the diverse perspectives that are presented. It makes you consider how the Western media still tries to desensitize us to the horror and brutal atrocities Palestinians face daily, by constantly vilifying them. Each of these pieces forces you see things from their POV. It forces us to acknowledge our complicity in the genocide.
It makes us truly witness, through their words, how their lives drastically changed under Isr*el’s occupation (even more so in the current state of censorship that our society is in). We see how they mourn the way everyday life used to be: the uneventful days, fleeting frustrations and stress that are no longer relevant with how they must prioritize survival. We see how they go through constant grief. We also see how they try to preserve their memories of a beautiful home they no longer have.
Each piece in this has a unique tone with unfiltered and direct perspectives from Gazans themselves. I appreciated how the author of each piece had tiny bios describing who they are and what they did. Some of these writers have also been martyred. This book, in its entirety, humanizes the Palestinians. They are not just numbers and statistics. The collection comes together to represent their grief and resilience. The immense level of scholasticide suffered at the hands of Isra*l’s genoc*de is truly horrifying. So, a recurring theme throughout this book is that the act of writing will always be a tool of resistance.
This book struck so many chords within me. Each of the writings in this were truly impactful and reflective through the diverse perspectives that are presented. It makes you consider how the Western media still tries to desensitize us to the horror and brutal atrocities Palestinians face daily, by constantly vilifying them. Each of these pieces forces you see things from their POV. It forces us to acknowledge our complicity in the genocide.
It makes us truly witness, through their words, how their lives drastically changed under Isr*el’s occupation (even more so in the current state of censorship that our society is in). We see how they mourn the way everyday life used to be: the uneventful days, fleeting frustrations and stress that are no longer relevant with how they must prioritize survival. We see how they go through constant grief. We also see how they try to preserve their memories of a beautiful home they no longer have.
A few snippets that really stood out to me:
- Our fear now centers on inventing ways other than screaming for the kids to express their fear, because screaming means you’re alive, and that’s a dangerous coincidence that is undesirable to the other side.
- We miss you; this feeling invades us and we are sad because we do not know how to get you back, we do not know how to tell you that we miss you.
- In our regular everyday lives, we need to search for meaning. But in the life of pain, we must create meaning. Who creates meaning if not those who have been scalded by unending pain?
- You were forced to leave everything behind: the city of your soul; the streets that gave birth to you, and were born to you. The house your father left for you. And all your dreams, or what’s left of them.
Truly thankful to have read this important piece and I would strongly recommend this for anyone out there.
Many many thanks to Netgalley and RandomHouse SEA for the ARC!
dark
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Letters From Gaza is a collection of essays written by various Palestinian authors and poets, collected by Mahmoud Alshaer and Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq, documenting life in Palestine since the beginning of the War.
I usually struggle to rate nonfiction, as I feel like the experience of other people is not something I can objectively give a number to. However in this case I want to contribute to this collection to reach as many people as possible, as it is an important insight.
I usually struggle to rate nonfiction, as I feel like the experience of other people is not something I can objectively give a number to. However in this case I want to contribute to this collection to reach as many people as possible, as it is an important insight.
"We spend whatever remaining time we have sorting through memories, out of fear they might be destroyed."
- Doha Kahlout
There is a certain numbness that can come over you as horrifying news come day after day, numbers and statistics of deaths and injuries. But the people of Gaza and for that matter every single person caught in a warzone is more than a number. More than a casualty. Every single one had a story and a life. In this novel, every letter ends with a biography that tells you a bit about the person who wrote it, where they are now and I am infinitely grateful for it. Even at the time of publishing not all authors were still reachable and their fate remains unknown.
The letters explore different emotions and questions the people of Gaza have. It often is about home, about the world, if they see and care and is about small personal things that are unique to every single person.
This is heartbreaking and difficult literature but it is necessary and should be read by anyone who has the basic empathy to care about this unjust war.
There is a certain numbness that can come over you as horrifying news come day after day, numbers and statistics of deaths and injuries. But the people of Gaza and for that matter every single person caught in a warzone is more than a number. More than a casualty. Every single one had a story and a life. In this novel, every letter ends with a biography that tells you a bit about the person who wrote it, where they are now and I am infinitely grateful for it. Even at the time of publishing not all authors were still reachable and their fate remains unknown.
The letters explore different emotions and questions the people of Gaza have. It often is about home, about the world, if they see and care and is about small personal things that are unique to every single person.
This is heartbreaking and difficult literature but it is necessary and should be read by anyone who has the basic empathy to care about this unjust war.
dark
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challenging
dark
emotional
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fast-paced
We need to keeping talking about Gaza and this book was so heartbreaking and I was very much crying sometimes thinking about this.
informative
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy
Letters From Gaza collected by Mahmoud Alshaer and Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq is a nonfiction anthology of translated letters and poems written by Palestinians in Gaza documenting the genocide that is happening in their homeland.
This is the kind of work that I really struggle to give a star rating to. Not because I don’t find it meaningful or impactful, but because I really struggle to give a star rating to something documenting human suffering like this. I just feel it misses the point entirely. The main reason I’m giving it a star rating is because that’s something people do look for when deciding to pick up a work and I think this anthology is far too important to get lost in the noise of everything else or to be forgotten by history. As stated in the forward, Palestine was known for short stories in order to avoid censorship, but now these individuals are stating clearly and explicitly what is happening.
There’s a very famous quote about how we mourn one death but a million deaths is just a statistic. Unfortunately, I think there is some truth to that quote and I think this anthology combats it wonderfully. Every single piece is accompanied by a bio detailing the life of the writer, their other published works, and, in some, what they’re doing now. It humanizes them further and gives a face, a life, a name to these words. I cried multiple times while reading this and I do believe that the bios played a part in how hard it was hitting me.
Two of the common features of the letters that make me feel this is a must read are 1) the mentions of social media and mobile phones and 2) the disruption of education, life, love, and happiness. It is so easy for many of us to just buy into this idea that countries outside of our own are less developed or, in the near future, accept a larger distance from what happened than there actually is. We do that already by having images of the Civil Rights Movement in black and white instead of in full color, which we absolutely could be circulating instead. It reminds the reader constantly that this is a modern event that is on-going no matter how uncomfortable that might make us.
Content warning for death and genocide
I would recommend this to anyone who has even a passing interest in supporting Palestinians
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