Mohammed El-Kurd: preference

Transcript context

…So poetry ultimately prizes the power of words and so the power of the medium of poetry transfers nicely to any medium that celebrates words, I mean, just writing novels, tweeting. You’re also working on a new book, a memoir. What’s the title? What can you say about it? My memoir is bizarre because I’m so young, so it’s not really my memoir, but it’s rather a memoir of the neighborhood in which I grew up. The title, the tentative title, is, A Million States In One, and it’s a nod to how many different realities and universes exist in this tiny one country. And it’s a documentation of the two waves of expulsion in 2009 and 2020 and 2021 and a behind the scenes of the campaign that took place, the diplomatic and media campaign and grassroots campaign that took place, to save our homes. It’s also an exploration of other communities that are threatened with expulsion and other communities who are resisting in their own way, be it in Beita, in Nablus, or South Hebron Hills, in [inaudible 01:56:33], or in Silwan, or in [inaudible 01:56:36], all these communities that are dealing with different forms of expulsion. And the emphasis that I’m trying to achieve with this book is dignity. I want to write a book about my experiences that is super dignified, that kicks its feet up on the table, and says what it wants unabashedly. Because we are told not only are we going to be victimized, but we are going to be polite in our suffering. I want to reject that completely and I want to lean into the humor of the past few years of my life because I think that’s really what the world needs and what I need to be writing. A few questions here, but one of them is about humor. In Rifqa, you wrote, “My mother has always said the most tragic of disasters is those that cause laughter.” What do you think she meant by that?…

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