Link to last week’s reading group post.
Summary of this book.
The first book for this reading group will be Perfect Victims, by Mohammed El-Kurd. I’ve pasted the summary below.
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.
This book touches a lot on how Palestinians are constantly expected (especially by Europeans, who invented anti-semitism) to apologize for being Palestinians, and for being victimized by Jewish people.
Comrades who can’t afford to buy the book should definitely not go to annas-archive (dot) org and find a digital copy there, since that would be wrong and we are all law-abiding, copyright-respecting citizens.
I’m making this post a double-chapter one and keeping it up for two weeks, since I tend to forget to update them. We’ll see how that works. This is now past where I’ve read the book, so I’m going to do my best to join the discussion more for this one. Thanks to everyone who has participated so far!
I really struggled to read the ebook (stalled around Ch1). I got through it but had nothing to say on it. So I ordered a physical book. Then while waiting for it, I learned I could access it via audiobook. So a little while ago I put it on while I was fixing some lamps. A quiet activity requiring a minimum of brainpower, so can give enough focus to a book requiring it. I got through to Chapter 8, almost done.
Basically this book is making a point I already agree with. I do not feel my mind has been changed about anything. Perhaps reaffirmed.
So I can’t tell if I am
Sorry I know it sounds arrogant. But I am not accustomed to reading at all these days, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to get from this.
So my comment is a little meta. I’m not criticizing the book or the choice.