Description
By (author) El-Kurd, Mohammed
Short /annotation:
Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusalan ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
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PALESTINE BOOK AWARD WINNER
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
“Mohammed El-Kurd has written a new Discourse on Colonialism for the twenty-first century.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley
Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.
Table of contents:
author’s note(s)
one: the sniper’s hands are clean of blood
on dehumanization
two: the politics of defanging
on “humanization”
three: shireen’s passport
on the invention of the civilian
four: a life in cross-examination
on forbidden sentiments
five: tropes and drones
on discursive land mines
six: mein kampf in the playroom
on propaganda
seven: miraculous epiphanies
on testimony
eight: are we indeed all palestinians?
on identity
nine: “do you want to throw israelis into the sea?”
on irreverence
epilogue
Review quote:
“Great poets are truth-tellers, and the truth hurts. Mohammed El-Kurd’s raw eloquence and razor-sharp clarity will make you hurt and curse and cry and sometimes chuckle. A few will think, only to realize he is also talking about ”us,” the allies, the empathizers, even the comrades whose solidarity unwittingly demands the perfect victim. We are not completely free of Zionist lies; we are not decolonized. Mohammed El-Kurd has written a new Discourse on Colonialism for the twenty-first century. And like Aimé Césaire, he demands that we confront the truth, wipe away our crocodile tears, and take down Goliath once and for all.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“Here”s a river of fire. Dive in, if you dare. It will clear the fog.”
—Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
“In Perfect Victims, Mohammed El-Kurd recenters the Palestinian gaze as compass and metric unit.”
—Noura Erakat, author of Justice for Some
“Mohammed El-Kurd’s voice is unequivocal in a hallucinatory media sphere that portrays the colonized and the occupied as either passive victims of an unnamable crime or the very perpetrators of unspeakable crimes they themselves experience. Perfect Victims is essay and memoir at its best. It portrays children forged by occupation and war and a humble
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