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In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (Liveright, 2024) takes Syria's refugee outflow as its point of departure. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted across more than a decade, it probes a question as intimate as it is universal: What is home? With gripping immediacy, Syrians now on five continents share stories of leaving, losing, searching, and finding (or not finding) home. Across this tapestry of voices, a new understanding emerges: home, for those without the privilege of taking it for granted, is both struggle and achievement. Recasting “refugee crises” as acts of diaspora-making, The Home I Worked to Make challenges readers to grapple with the hard-won wisdom of those who survive war and to see, with fresh eyes, what home means in their own lives. Wendy Pearlman is professor of political science at Northwestern University. She speaks Arabic and is the author of five books on the Middle East, including We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (Liveright, 2024) takes Syria's refugee outflow as its point of departure. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted across more than a decade, it probes a question as intimate as it is universal: What is home? With gripping immediacy, Syrians now on five continents share stories of leaving, losing, searching, and finding (or not finding) home. Across this tapestry of voices, a new understanding emerges: home, for those without the privilege of taking it for granted, is both struggle and achievement. Recasting “refugee crises” as acts of diaspora-making, The Home I Worked to Make challenges readers to grapple with the hard-won wisdom of those who survive war and to see, with fresh eyes, what home means in their own lives. Wendy Pearlman is professor of political science at Northwestern University. She speaks Arabic and is the author of five books on the Middle East, including We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies
In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (Liveright, 2024) takes Syria's refugee outflow as its point of departure. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted across more than a decade, it probes a question as intimate as it is universal: What is home? With gripping immediacy, Syrians now on five continents share stories of leaving, losing, searching, and finding (or not finding) home. Across this tapestry of voices, a new understanding emerges: home, for those without the privilege of taking it for granted, is both struggle and achievement. Recasting “refugee crises” as acts of diaspora-making, The Home I Worked to Make challenges readers to grapple with the hard-won wisdom of those who survive war and to see, with fresh eyes, what home means in their own lives. Wendy Pearlman is professor of political science at Northwestern University. She speaks Arabic and is the author of five books on the Middle East, including We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (Liveright, 2024) takes Syria's refugee outflow as its point of departure. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted across more than a decade, it probes a question as intimate as it is universal: What is home? With gripping immediacy, Syrians now on five continents share stories of leaving, losing, searching, and finding (or not finding) home. Across this tapestry of voices, a new understanding emerges: home, for those without the privilege of taking it for granted, is both struggle and achievement. Recasting “refugee crises” as acts of diaspora-making, The Home I Worked to Make challenges readers to grapple with the hard-won wisdom of those who survive war and to see, with fresh eyes, what home means in their own lives. Wendy Pearlman is professor of political science at Northwestern University. She speaks Arabic and is the author of five books on the Middle East, including We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Join us for the live stream of a conversation with Syrian writer & former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh moderated by Wendy Pearlman & Danny Postel. Broadcasting from Haymarket House. This event took place on October 17, 2023. Join us for the livestream of a conversation with Yassin al-Haj Saleh, the leading intellectual voice of the Syrian uprising and one of the key thinkers in the Arab world today, during his first visit ever to the U.S. Among al-Haj Saleh's nine books is The Impossible Revolution (Haymarket Books, 2017), which makes sense of both the nature of authoritarian domination in Syria and the historic popular struggle to topple it. Moderated by Wendy Pearlman, author of We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria and Danny Postel, co-editor of The Syria Dilemma and The People Reloaded, this dialogue will explore the origins and trajectory of the Syrian uprising, the internal and external forces that thwarted it, what comes next in the quest of emancipatory change, what lessons the Syrian experience might have for other struggles, and what lessons other struggles might have for Syria. This public event is co-sponsored by Northwestern University's Middle East and North African Studies Program, New Lines Magazine, and Haymarket Books. Speakers: Yassin al-Haj Saleh is the leading intellectual voice of the Syrian uprising and one of the key thinkers in the Arab world today. Born in the city of Raqqa in 1961, he was arrested in 1980 in Aleppo for his membership in a left-wing political organization and spent 16 years in prison. His wife, Samira al-Khalil, was abducted by an armed Islamist group in 2013. He is the author of nine books, including The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy (2017) and The Atrocious and its Representation (English edition forthcoming). One of the founders of the bilingual Arabic-English platform Aljumhuriya.net, he writes for a variety of international publications and is a Contributing Writer for New Lines Magazine. He is now based in Berlin. Wendy Pearlman is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she also holds the Crown Professorship of Middle East Studies and is currently director of the Middle East and North Africa Studies program. She is the author of Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (2003); Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (2011); We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017); Triadic Coercion: Israel's Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (with Boaz Atzili, 2018); and Muzoon: A Syrian Refugee Speaks Out (with Muzoon Almellehan, 2023). Her sixth book, The Home I Worked To Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora, is forthcoming from Liveright Books in 2024. Danny Postel is Politics Editor of New Lines Magazine, an award-winning global affairs publication which the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard says has “built a home for long-form international reporting.” He is the author of Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran (2006) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future (2010), The Syria Dilemma (2013), and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (2017). His current book-in-progress, “Critical Solidarity,” explores the legacies of the late international relations theorist, Middle East scholar and internationalist Fred Halliday. This event is co-sponsored by Northwestern University's Middle East and North African Studies Program, New Lines Magazine, and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/qfmjwRD_ho4 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
This week on the show, I'm joined by two book-lovers, book bloggers and activists to talk about some really important issues: Ola Abou and Ilham Essalih. We're talking about what books we should read to further understand the war on Gaza, and the war in Syria, and how the movements for liberation in Palestine and Syria are intertwined. At the time of recording (16th October), we were on day 9 of Israel's war against Gaza, with the official death toll having reached nearly 3,000, 700 of whom are children and babies. For 9 days, the besieged Gaza strip has faced relentless attacks and a total land, sea and air blockade, cutting off its supplies of water, food and fuel to 2.3 million people. The situation is beyond horrendous, as hospitals struggle to cope with the injured amid a lack of medical supplies and doctors, and communities are being ordered to leave their homes due to imminent attacks. Even while leaving, passages that were previously declared as safe, have been attacked, sparing no one. There are also increasing reports on attacks in the occupied West Bank, and arrests of over 70 people. The death toll has now exceeded well over 4,000 people, and schools and hospitals have been ruthlessly attacked. Unfortunately, Palestine is not the only place impacted by Israel at the moment. Israel has been bombing Syria, which since 2011, has been in a devastating state of war and crisis. Twelve years after protesters in Syria first demonstrated and rose up against the four-decade rule of the Assad family, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and nearly thirteen million people—more than half the country's prewar population—have been displaced. Amid war, the Syrian people are suffering an economic crisis, and a massive earthquake at the start of 2023 cast much of the population in the north into further despair.Follow Ola and Ilham on social media:Ola: www.instagram.com/slowreadingola Ilham: www.instagram.com/ilhamreadsBooks mentioned in this episode:Palestine:ClassicsGhassan Kanafani: Men in the Sun, Palestine's Children Emile Habiby: The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist Halim Barakat: Days of Dust (was meant to mention this book but I forgot but it's really good!)Poetry of Mahmoud DarwishNon-fiction/memoirs: Palestine writers:Edward Said: The Question of Palestine + his memoir Out of Place Mourid Barghouti: I Saw Ramallah Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (history)Jewish writers:Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine + Ten Myths About Israel Avi Shlaim: Three Worlds Massoud Hayoun: When We Were Arabs (forgot to mention this, it's another memoir about Jews from Arab lands, really essential for understanding Zionism)Contemporary:Isabella Hammad: The ParisianAdania Shibli: Minor Detail Ahlam Bsharat: Trees of the Absentees + Code Name: Butterfly Mohammed El-Kurd: Rifqa (poetry) Syria:-In Praise of Hatred, Khaled Khalifa-What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad-The Middle East Crisis Factory, Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash-We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, Wendy Pearlman-Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami-You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, Alaa Abd El-Fattah-The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh-The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War by Delphine MinouiSupport the show
This is a conversation with Dana Moss, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame and the author of the book "The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes." Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: TheFireThisTi.Me Substack newsletter: https://thefirethesetimes.substack.com/ Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes Topics Discussed: How Yemeni, Libyan and Syrian diasporas in the US and UK reacted to the Arab Spring Risks of protesting in the diaspora Government responses to diaspora pressures and activism Personal insights from my own experience Why diasporas are still undervalued Impostor's syndrome and survivor's guilt Diasporas are not homogeneous The Interpol problem Legacy of the Arab Spring Recommended Books: Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War by Leila Al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority by Sean R. Roberts Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia by Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw
In this week's episode, Duvar English Editor-in-chief Cansu Çamlıbel hosts American political scientist Wendy Pearlman to talk about her latest book “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria,” which was recently published in Turkish. Pearlman spoke to hundreds of Syrian refugees, collecting human stories from one of recent history's biggest humanitarian crises.
Today's episode features an interview with Wendy Pearlman, author of We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria. Pick up a copy at your local library or bookstore. Books and website recommended by Wendy Pearlman during the interview: Impossible Revolution by Yassin al-Haj Saleh https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34144862-the-impossible-revolution His contributions to AlJumhuriya.net https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/authors/yassin-al-haj-saleh Burning Country by Robin Yassin-Kassab https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26153738-burning-country Assad or We Burn the Country by Sam Dagher https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36341671-assad-or-we-burn-the-country syriadirect.org aljumhuriya.net thenewhumanitarian.org For Sama https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/for-sama/ The Cave https://www.nationalgeographic.com/films/the-cave/#/ Follow EMM on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where we are emmrefugees. Join in the work of welcome by making a donation to Episcopal Migration Ministries. No gift is too small, and all are put to use to welcome our newest neighbors. Visit episcopalmigrationministries.org/give or text HOMETOWN to 91999. Our theme song composer is Abraham Mwinda Ikando. Find his music at https://abrahammwinda.bandcamp.com/
Wendy Pearlman is associate professor of political science at Northwestern University. She is the author of Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (2003); Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (2011); and We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017). In our conversation Wendy helped to shed knowledge on the uprising in Syria. We also discuss specific stories from We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria. Check out Wendy: https://twitter.com/Wendy_Pearlman https://www.facebook.com/wendy.pearlman.5 https://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Pearlman/e/B001K8P6ZK%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
On this special Choir Sunday on April 14, 2019, the Unity Temple Choir under the direction of Marty Swisher, Unity Temple Music Director, performs John Kramer's "The Immigrant Experience," a choral cantata in seven movements. Scored for full chorus, soprano, baritone and tenor soloists and chamber ensemble, the work describes the journey and struggles of immigrants coming to America to realize the promise of freedom. The work features texts by our U.S. founding fathers establishing our country as a place of welcome for immigrants. The musical offering is preceded by a reading from We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman. John Kramer serves as Music Director at the Winchester Unitarian Society in Winchester, Massachusetts. The performance includes guest vocalists tenor John Concepcion, baritone Keanon Kyles and soprano Rosalind Lee. They are accompanied by Peter Engel-Storms on piano, Jean Hatmaker on violoncello, Meg Lanfear on violin and Daniel Williams on clarinet. Those wishing to follow along with the text of "The Immigrant Experience" while listening can find it at http://www.unitytemple.org/sites/default/files/The%20Immigrant%20Experience%20Text.pdf. Additionally, the composer's program notes can be found at http://www.unitytemple.org/sites/default/files/Program%20Notes%20by%20the%20Composer.pdf. The theme for April is what it means to be a people of wholeness. To read about our theme-based ministry, please visit http://www.unitytemple.org/faith-development/soul-connections
Trump asked for, and got, a ten percent increase in defense spending this year – even though the American military is the most massive, the most technologically advanced, and the best-funded fighting force in the world. But in the last fifteen years of constant war it has won nothing. Tom Engelhardt comments; he's the legendary editor who created and runs the TomDispatch website, and his new book is “A Nation Unmade by War.” Plus: Trump and Syrian refugees: During Obama's last year, about 10,000 were admitted to the US; so far this year, the number is eleven. Wendy Pearlman explains – she interviewed hundreds of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and Europe. Her new book is “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria."
Trump asked for, and got, a ten percent increase in defense spending this year – even though the American military is the most massive, the most technologically advanced, and the best-funded fighting force in the world. But in the last fifteen years of constant war it has won nothing. Tom Engelhardt comments; he’s the legendary editor who created and runs the TomDispatch website, and his new book is “A Nation Unmade by War.” Plus: Trump and Syrian refugees: During Obama’s last year, about 10,000 were admitted to the US; so far this year, the number is eleven. Wendy Pearlman explains – she interviewed hundreds of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and Europe. Her new book is “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria."
Everyone said the Irish vote on abortion would be close – but 66 per cent voted “yes” last Friday, including a majority of men, and a majority of every age group except those over 65. Katha Pollitt was there – she reports on the campaign, and the victory celebrations. Also: the American military is the most massive, the most technologically advanced, and the best-funded fighting force in the world -- but in the last fifteen years of constant war it has won nothing. Tom Engelhardt comments; he’s the legendary editor who created and runs the TomDispatch website, and his new book is “A Nation Unmade by War.” Plus: Trump and Syrian refugees: During Obama’s last year, about 10,000 were admitted to the US; so far this year, the number is eleven. Wendy Pearlman explains – she interviewed hundreds of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and Europe. Her new book is “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria.”
Speaker: Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University Discussant: Malu Halasa Chair: Rahaf Aldoughli, University of Manchester This event launches Wendy Pearlman's book, “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria”. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, the book features a collection of intimate wartime testimonies from a cross-section of Syrians whose lives have been transformed by revolution, war, and flight. Recorded on Wednesday 21 March.