Rhymes of Blood and Jasmine is far more than a bilingual poetry collection; it is a poetic and cultural testimony that merges lyrical beauty with critical depth. Spanning over five decades of creative expression, Dr. Hilmi Zawati weaves verses charged with spiritual and romantic love, exile, memory, resistance, and identity. Symbols like jasmine, oranges, figs, and blood evoke a profound sense of homeland, sacrifice, and longing, forming an emotional tapestry firmly rooted in the Palestinian experience. This is poetry that does not simply describe a reality but embodies it, offering readers an intimate portal into a world shaped by history and sustained by hope.
What makes this collection truly singular is its self-translation—a rare act that unites author and translator into a single, cohesive poetic voice. Zawati transcends conventional translation by recreating the essence of his Arabic poems in English with unmatched emotional and stylistic fidelity. His bilingual artistry breathes life into both texts, allowing them to resonate authentically across languages and cultures, ensuring that the nuance and musicality of the original are never lost.
This work speaks to a broad audience of readers, scholars, poets, translators, and students of translation studies, comparative literature, Palestinian history, and Arab diaspora cultures. It asserts translation as a form of cultural sovereignty—rejecting distortion, simplification, and marginalisation—while affirming the enduring presence of Arab poetic tradition within global literature. Rhymes of Blood and Jasmine is not just to be read; it is to be lived. A poetic bridge between languages and worlds, it revives silenced memories and restores the voice of love and homeland with grace, dignity, and truth. This collection is an essential contribution to world literature, offering a poignant reminder of poetry’s power to heal, resist, and connect.
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I am a poet by essence; all other identities are subordinate. Hilmi M. Zawati, born in Nablus in 1953, is a renowned Palestinian poet, playwright, novelist and international humanitarian and human rights jurist. Over the past five decades, he has…
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Nikesha Breeze has taken pages from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, taken his words, and forced them to leave his colonized mind. She has made the words her own in poetic form. She illuminates the invisible Black voices inside, a radical, surgical, and unapologetic Black appropriation, at the same time as a careful birthing and spiritual road map. The resulting poems are sizzling purifications, violent restorations of integrity, pain, wound, bewilderment, rage, and, sometimes, luminous generosity. This is a work of Reclamation. The author, Nikesha Breeze, has slowly, page by page, reclaimed the text of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This racist turn-of-the-19th-century book was pivotal in the continued dehumanization of Black people and in particular of African people, as it painted an image of bestiality on the Congo people and the continent. It is laced with racist imagery and language. The author has reappropriated the book, page by page, making “BlackOut” poetry for each page, isolating methodically the words to create new poems of power and black voice within the text —stealing the language and reappropriating the power.
Cradles is a collection poems on the nature(s) and nurturing that cradle us. They are divided into four parts: Womb is the first cradle, both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’, under-acknowledged and often unmentioned. Beyond the physical womb of individuals, there are collective wombs that incubate on yet grander and greater scales. Land(s) are the cradles we typically identify as our ‘origins’, but as the Cradle of Humankind teaches, the many lands of today are interlaced in many concealed ways and originated in a single, little understood place. Tides are the many migrations and cycles of time that shape us. They can shift, upset and remake the nurturing of cradles; but also cradle us in cycles of wreckage. Wind sets us free of places and times of origin. This detachment can bring freedom, a sense of loss/lostness, and the many things in between. The freedom/loss/lostness spiral whirls with the wind and transforms. In surrendering to it we can alter its pace to our needs and desires.
Morocco, 1359. The people of Fes are living in deprivation under the rule of an unjust sultan. Zakaria is a young Muslim scholar trying to sustain his family while committing to a rigid moral code. To provide for his sickly daughter, he sacrifices his principles and seeks a job at the palace, where he gradually becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, his conscience tormented by serving the sultan. In the hope of fleeing from the constraints of his world, he joins the quest of Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the exiled king of Granada, and his enchanting sister, Aisha, to reclaim their throne. Together, they set out to Andalusia on a journey that will call into question all of Zakaria’s beliefs and change the history of the Iberian Peninsula for decades to come.
Then He Sent Prophets is a story about the suffering of young idealists in a world of inevitable compromise. Throughout his journey, Zakaria faces internal struggles that are timeless and universal, strives to reconcile his faith with the world, doubts the motives behind his desire to live morally, and ends up wondering whether a life consisting of one compromise after another is one worth living.
Then He Sent Prophets is a novel for our moment. Set around the political struggles of fourteenth-century Granada, it is a deeply sympathetic and passionately human look at how one might make—or fail to make—moral, decent choices when living in a violent, indecent world.
— Marcia Lynx Qualey, founding editor of ArabLit
Circumstances present Zakaria with a position at the palace. […] Can someone critical of the sultan and conscious of his corruption maintain integrity while serving at the palace? And what’s the line between complete innocence and partial complicity? These are the questions at the crux of his ethical dilemma. […] It’s easy to make connections between Zakaria’s inner dilemmas and those many of us grapple with today.
— Hafsa Lodi in The New Arab
Breaking the Chains of Silence opens where any serious account of Kenya must begin: with silence. But this is not the quiet of peace or the calm of justice. It is a manufactured silence—forged by land theft, detention, exile, assassinations, police bullets, and media too intimidated to print the truth. It is the silence that follows the gun and precedes the next uprising.
This book bravely refuses that silence. It dismantles the comfortable myth that Kenya became free simply because a flag was raised in 1963. It rejects the official narrative that the struggle ended with independence, leaving citizens as spectators while a small elite inherited the state, the land, the police, and the economy. Instead, it insists that Kenya’s real history is not the story of presidents, but of working people—first fighting colonialism, then confronting the imperialism that survived under new flags and through local agents.
Crucially, the book refuses to imprison resistance in the past. It reads the present with urgency, seeing the courage of the Gen Z movement, the defiance of the RutoMustGo protests, and the young people who walked into streets patrolled by a contemptuous state. It sees their rejection of taxation, corruption, and police violence. Yet it refuses to flatter that moment into myth. It insists that spontaneous anger must evolve into organisation, protest into political education, and generational revolt must find its class foundation. The cry of the youth must meet the power of workers.
While the essays engage with current contradictions, they remain rooted in theory—one essential element for revolutionary change. The other is practice: putting ideas into action and facing the enemy where bullets and prisons are the reality. This combination of theory and practice lays the groundwork for a people’s revolution. It is for this reason the book includes Gathanga Ndung’u’s vital essay, From Mau Mau to Ruto Must Go: A Genealogy of Resistance, which connects historical struggle to today’s frontline.
Este libro narra la conmovedora historia de Patrocinia Polanco Rivas, una campesina salvadoreña que personifica la lucha por la dignidad en medio de la adversidad. A través de su testimonio y el análisis del autor Andrés McKinley, la obra recorre su vida, desde una infancia marcada por la pobreza extrema y la opresión de la oligarquía cafetalera, hasta su participación en la guerra civil como operadora de radio del FMLN tras el asesinato de su mentor, el padre Rutilio Grande. La guerra le arrebata a su padre, pero forja en ella una resistencia inquebrantable.
Tras los Acuerdos de Paz de 1992, la esperanza de una vida digna se desvanece ante la persistente pobreza y las políticas neoliberales que mantienen a las familias campesinas en la miseria. Para sobrevivir, Patrocinia trabaja incansablemente cortando caña de azúcar, mientras la falta de oportunidades lleva a su esposo y, posteriormente, a sus seis hijos a emprender el peligroso viaje migratorio hacia Estados Unidos. El libro documenta los horrores de este periplo: el abandono, la extorsión, el secuestro y la constante amenaza de la muerte.
Una vez en el norte, los hijos de Patrocinia se enfrentan a la dura realidad de la vida indocumentada y a la maquinaria represiva del ICE, especialmente bajo la administración de Donald Trump. La autora establece un poderoso paralelismo entre la violencia de los escuadrones de la muerte en El Salvador y la persecución sistemática de los migrantes.
El Precio de la Dignidad es un testimonio de la resiliencia humana, mostrando que la dignidad no reside en el éxito de la lucha, sino en la propia lucha, un legado que Patrocinia heredó de su padre. El libro se erige como un recordatorio urgente de las consecuencias humanas de la guerra, de la injusticia económica y de las políticas migratorias despiadadas.
Every Country Gets the Fascism It Deserves documents the systematic construction of xenophobic violence as a political project in post-apartheid South Africa. Richard Pithouse traces how the state, media and organised political forces have cultivated hatred against migrants, transforming social pain into organised cruelty.
The book begins with the May 2008 pogroms that killed 62 people and displaced 100,000, showing how the mob followed the logic of a state that had already begun dehumanising migrants. It documents the rise of the All Truck Drivers Foundation, which murdered more than 200 drivers in organised attacks, and the subsequent emergence of Operation Dudula and March and March—well-funded astroturfed movements that normalised fascist language and violence.
Pithouse reveals the complicity of the police, media and major political parties—including the ANC, DA, MKP, ActionSA and Patriotic Alliance—in legitimating xenophobic violence. He shows how the mob and state have collaborated to drive more than 150,000 people across South Africa’s borders in a matter of weeks, with government infrastructure facilitating mass deportation.
Drawing on the work of Aijaz Ahmad, Alain Badiou and Richard Seymour, Pithouse argues that the erosion of democratic norms, the reactivation of ethnic mobilisation, and the normalisation of sadism constitute a fascist challenge to the constitutional order. The book insists that the answer to the far right is never to move rightward, but always to build a politics of universal solidarity rooted in the principle that a person is a person wherever they may find themselves.
With a foreword by Michael Neocosmos and an afterword by Abahlali baseMjondolo founder S’bu Zikode, this is an urgent account of a country’s descent into organised cruelty—and a powerful call for a politics of human dignity.
This essay was originally published on Richard Pithouse’s Substack: https://substack.com/profile/143275356-richard-pithouse
Unsilenced: Poems for Palestine is a collection of poems that convey profound emotions and serious reflections on the ongoing situation in Gaza and Palestine since the Nakba. The anthology seeks to express the moral outrage felt by poets from around the world, highlighting the perceived double standards of the West regarding international law and the suffering of the Palestinian people. The poems examine the daily realities of life and philosophical perspectives on the human condition, using nature as a motif to articulate emotions and explore themes of homeland, childhood, exile, genocide, and war. All proceeds from the sale of the collection will be donated to Gaza, demonstrating the poets’ commitment to fostering positive change through their art. Contributors include diverse voices from various countries, each recognizing the urgency and necessity of addressing the inhumane actions perpetrated against Palestine.
Income from the sale of this title will be donated for Palestine.
Praise for Unsilenced
Haunting verses by poets fluent in the language of death and genocide. Each poem rings out as a piece of memory, a bridge and a dream. This elegy will stand as a testimonial, a witness, by brave voices exhausted by the deafening silence of a traumatized world. —Nnimmo Bassey, author of I See the Invisible (poems) and Laureate of the Right to Livelihood Award 2010
… the priceless value of an anthology of lyrics from yet another encircled, blitzed, strafed, and bombarded commune, ghetto, or kibbutz, is that it bears indelible witness to the unbreakable human spirit yearning for freedom, for peace, for bread and wine and water set amid an olive grove or a lemon orchard. That is what you will unfold in editor John P. Portelli’s Unsilenced: Poetry for Palestine. Poets—Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian, Atheist and Surrealist—voice suffering, resilience, despair, and hope, speaking out of their fragile humanity to demand that vile atrocities cease. — George Elliott Clarke, author of Canticles I-III, 6 vols, MMXVI-MMXXIII (2016-2023)
Unsilenced shows how poetry is written to trigger and provoke, to bear witness, to look at the sky and shout, over and over, as loudly as necessary against injustice. Immanuel Mifsud, Associate Professor, University of Malta and winner of the European Union Prize for Literature (2011).
Contributing Authors
Lababidi’s Palestine Wail calls for the simplest, barest humanity, and it reminds us that loss of life, occupation, and genocide take an impossible toll on everyone. Finally, it holds us all accountable to address injustice, to dispel oppression and to work toward collaborative and restorative justice. In our interview, we focused on what he saw as our responsibility to humanity. — How Hope Outlasts Despair: An Interview with Yahia Lababidi — https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/how-hope-outlasts-despair-an-interview-with-yahia-lababidi
…a poignant message of compassion and hope, the kind beautifully expressed by Yahia Lababidi in his #book #Palestine Wail,
@DarajaPress.
“Since purchasing the book, I have read the poem every day—it tends to feed my imagination.” https://boundlessphilanthropy.com/writings/tending-the-imagination-the-practice-of-creativity-care-challenge-compassion #poetry #Gaza
Renowned aphorist Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail writes alongside a catastrophe beyond words, trying to shelter in words what remains of our humanity. To be a Minister of Loneliness and Lightkeeper, tending to the light. — Philip Metres, author of Fugitive/Refuge
Palestine is personal for writer, Yahia Lababidi. His Palestinian grandmother, Rabiha Dajani — educator, activist & social worker — was forced to flee her ancestral home in Jerusalem, at gunpoint, some eighty years ago.
As an Arab-American, Lababidi feels deeply betrayed by the USA’s blind support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
In Palestine Wail, he reminds us that religion is not politics, Judaism is not Zionism, and to criticize the immoral, illegal actions of Israel is not antisemitism — especially since, as an Arab, Lababidi is a Semite, himself.
Using both poetry and prose, Lababidi reflects on how we are neither our corrupt governments, nor our compromised media. Rather, we are partners in humanity, members of one human family. Not in Our Name will the unholy massacres of innocent Palestinians be committed (two-thirds of whom are women and children) nor in the false name of ‘self-defense’.
In turn, Lababidi reminds us that starvation as a weapon of war is both cruel and criminal, as is collective punishment.
Palestine Wail invites us to bear witness to this historical humanitarian crisis, unfolding in real-time, while not allowing ourselves to be deceived, intimidated or silenced. We are made aware of the basic human truths that no lasting peace can be founded upon profound injustice and that the jailor is never Free…
Yahia Lababidi, an Arab-American writer of Palestinian background, has crafted a poignant collection which serves as a heartfelt tribute to the Palestinian people, their struggles, and their resilience in the face of an ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The collection, described as a love letter to Gaza, draws inspiration from the rich literary tradition of Palestinian resistance literature. Lababidi, known for his critically-acclaimed books of aphorisms, essays, and poetry, brings his unique voice to this personal, political and spiritual work.
Palestine Wail addresses us in a variety of voices: outrage, lamentation and pity, in attempting to honor the pain of the oppressed Palestinian people, while also celebrating their enduring spirit.
Lababidi’s Wail, ultimately, is a prayerful work seeking peace, healing and reconciliation—a testament to the transformative power of literature to keep hope alive in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
These are necessary and truthful poems. Yahia Lababidi powerfully illuminates this heartbreaking time and terrible season in the history of our world. This book, like a lantern in darkness, brings to light the truth of lives we must learn to honor and remember. — James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Creativity, and Self-Compassion
Yahia Lababidi’s stunning and resonant collection, Palestine Wail, addresses the outrage felt by many of the oppressed Palestinian supporters and more. He also speaks of the lamentations of his people and the show of pity, compassion, and empathy from many members of the human family from all around the world. — The Indefatigable Longing For Peace And Rapprochement In Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail By Michael Parker.
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