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 really will try my best to post these weekly from now on.
I really struggled to read the ebook (stalled arouncd Ch1). I got through it but failed had nothing to say on it. So I ordered a physical book. Which will hopefully arrive eventually. Then learned I could access it via audiobook. So today 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.
I'm not waiting til Chapter 8 to post, sorry. I will forget. Instead, posting it now, in a 2 week old post.
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. When the book gets here I can try again in a format amenable to note taking, in case it's just going write over my head.