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Toyon 71: Dispatches from the Global Intifada
dispatch / verb / dɪˈspætʃ
to send something, especially goods or a message, somewhere for a particular purpose global / adjective / ɡloʊ.bəl relating to the whole world; including or affecting the whole world intifada / noun / ɪn.tɪˈfɑːdə an uprising; literally, a “shaking off” (Arabic) |
Editor's Dispatch, Fall 2024
What does Palestine require of us in this moment of genocide? This is the question that queer Palestinian writer and performance artist Fargo Tbhaki takes up in a recently-published essay for Protean Magazine. As we witness the horrors unfolding in Gaza, what does Palestine require of writers, readers, and editors writing, reading, and editing from within the imperial core? The editors at Toyon Multilingual Literary Magazine recognize these to be the most urgent and central questions of the day, and we have asked them at every step of the process that resulted in the book you now hold in your hands.
Tbhaki offers a few notes toward an approach to the work in front of us that begins with a betrayal of Craft in service of revolutionary political thought. Tbahki defines Craft as a “network of sanitizing influences” and regulations that form “acceptable” speech and rhetoric through a certain perspective while veiling certain political truths, especially when talking about what is happening in Palestine. In his words, Craft is "a machine for regulation, estrangement, [and] sanitization” that we must collectively resist: “Palestine and all the struggles with which it is bound up require of us, in any and all forms of speech going forward, a commitment to constant and escalating betrayals of this machine.” Melissa Wolf Roberts, featured in this collection and taking her cue from Noor Hindi, puts it more bluntly: “‘Fuck / Your Lecture on Craft’ / From the river to the sea, / I will post and scream / until it hurts me.” This is the spirit that guides these pages. From an anonymous blackout poem that presents a counternarrative to Cal Poly Humboldt’s “official line” on last April’s occupation of Siemens Hall to Jamilla Hashem’s intifada tatreez, Youssef M.N. Aly’s political collage, and the protest photography that make up our visual art collection, the pieces in Toyon 71 actively work to betray western Craft in ways that force us to confront Palestinians in their full humanity and wedge the issue of Palestinian liberation into normal, everyday discourse. But this is only the start of our work.
“Do not seek enlightenment in these words,” cautions Rouhollah Aghasaleh in the opening lines to Resonantia Fragoris: Verses from the Margins, a collection of poems written around the time of their arrest and suspension from teaching at Cal Poly Humboldt for their solidarity with students during last April’s protests. They continue, “I wrote these lines, without hope for outcome, communication, or understanding. I let the fire spread, consuming the house and garden.” One effect of Craft is that it often leaves us feeling as though the work is done, but as Aghasaleh’s words suggest, we must resist this sense of accomplishment. “Palestine,” Tbhaki explains, “requires that we abandon [...] catharsis. Nobody should get out of our work feeling purged, clean. Nobody should live happily during the war. Our readers can feel that way when liberation is the precondition of our work, and not the dream.” Guided by this call, our editors sought to publish works that, like Aghasaleh’s poems, unsettle and challenge us to stand in radical solidarity with a vision for a Free Palestine. In “How to Make ‘Peace’,” Indigenous poet Alisia Sanchez critiques the discourse of “peace” as both silencing tactic and blissful ignorance for those privileged enough to be removed from the impact of the occupation in Palestine. In “Dear Palestine,” poet Emma Goldman-Sherman acknowledges her feelings of guilt and powerlessness, but refuses to stay there, and ultimately denounces ties to fellow Jewish people who support Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign. Her perspective depicts an uncomfortable reckoning with identity and members of her own community, those who, in Goldman-Sherman’s eyes, haven’t started the difficult work of healing intergenerational traumas and fears. Like this, the contributors of Toyon 71, ranging from various ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, abandon catharsis and lean into the discomfort needed to refuse the rhetoric of dehumanization and colonial violence.
Finally, Palestine requires that our art be a mobilizing force for Palestine whose primary purpose, as Tbhaki states, “is to gather others up with us, to generate within them an energy which their bodies cannot translate into anything but revolutionary movement.” This outcome is achieved in a number of ways throughout the book. Works such as Gigi Hyden’s “What Will You Say?” and Carey Tinsley’s “‘Community Conversations’...or Settler Colonial Normalization?” invite readers to learn about the history and join organizing efforts for Palestine. Toyon’s work in literary translation aims to spread hope, inspire collaboration, and affirm values of solidarity, community, and accessibility by translating works into Spanish, French, Arabic, and Italian. At times, this mobilizing work even involves a healthy critique of the movement’s unintended exclusions. In “Dispatches from Bed: On the Intersection of Disability Justice and Palestinian Liberation,” I.B. Bedrotting critiques the ableist assumptions of activist culture, showing how abled bodies are privileged in protest spaces and illuminating the challenges disabled people face while trying to participate in social justice movements. In doing so, Bedrotting makes a case for more accessible forms of organizing so that we might gather everyone – regardless of ability – in our work to end the mass disablement of Palestinian people and arrive at liberation.
Inspired by Tbhaki’s charge, we asked for your dispatches: your righteous anger, your hopes, your list of demands for peace, as well as your experiences during the protests that took place on college campuses around the world, including our own. You heard our call and reported from your position within the global intifada. “Intifada,” an Arabic word that translates to “uprising,” also means to “be shaken, shake oneself.” To globalize the intifada is to resist, to “shake off” and rise up against colonialism, apartheid, and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. The pieces in this collection work to reject Craft, center anti-colonial politics, connect the threads between the systems of oppression that harm us all, and support the work to dismantle them, all in service of a free Palestine within our lifetimes.
Take a deep breath.
You have in your hands Toyon 71: Dispatches From the Global Intifada.
Your assignment is to read through, to lean into the difficult emotions that arise, and to practice self-care alongside community-care. We’re calling on you to expand your sense of community: to globalize and extend beyond borders and binaries, to mobilize your compassion and care, to move, to shake off, to gesture towards a liberated future for us all.
Thank you for being here.
Now let’s get moving.
Tbhaki offers a few notes toward an approach to the work in front of us that begins with a betrayal of Craft in service of revolutionary political thought. Tbahki defines Craft as a “network of sanitizing influences” and regulations that form “acceptable” speech and rhetoric through a certain perspective while veiling certain political truths, especially when talking about what is happening in Palestine. In his words, Craft is "a machine for regulation, estrangement, [and] sanitization” that we must collectively resist: “Palestine and all the struggles with which it is bound up require of us, in any and all forms of speech going forward, a commitment to constant and escalating betrayals of this machine.” Melissa Wolf Roberts, featured in this collection and taking her cue from Noor Hindi, puts it more bluntly: “‘Fuck / Your Lecture on Craft’ / From the river to the sea, / I will post and scream / until it hurts me.” This is the spirit that guides these pages. From an anonymous blackout poem that presents a counternarrative to Cal Poly Humboldt’s “official line” on last April’s occupation of Siemens Hall to Jamilla Hashem’s intifada tatreez, Youssef M.N. Aly’s political collage, and the protest photography that make up our visual art collection, the pieces in Toyon 71 actively work to betray western Craft in ways that force us to confront Palestinians in their full humanity and wedge the issue of Palestinian liberation into normal, everyday discourse. But this is only the start of our work.
“Do not seek enlightenment in these words,” cautions Rouhollah Aghasaleh in the opening lines to Resonantia Fragoris: Verses from the Margins, a collection of poems written around the time of their arrest and suspension from teaching at Cal Poly Humboldt for their solidarity with students during last April’s protests. They continue, “I wrote these lines, without hope for outcome, communication, or understanding. I let the fire spread, consuming the house and garden.” One effect of Craft is that it often leaves us feeling as though the work is done, but as Aghasaleh’s words suggest, we must resist this sense of accomplishment. “Palestine,” Tbhaki explains, “requires that we abandon [...] catharsis. Nobody should get out of our work feeling purged, clean. Nobody should live happily during the war. Our readers can feel that way when liberation is the precondition of our work, and not the dream.” Guided by this call, our editors sought to publish works that, like Aghasaleh’s poems, unsettle and challenge us to stand in radical solidarity with a vision for a Free Palestine. In “How to Make ‘Peace’,” Indigenous poet Alisia Sanchez critiques the discourse of “peace” as both silencing tactic and blissful ignorance for those privileged enough to be removed from the impact of the occupation in Palestine. In “Dear Palestine,” poet Emma Goldman-Sherman acknowledges her feelings of guilt and powerlessness, but refuses to stay there, and ultimately denounces ties to fellow Jewish people who support Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign. Her perspective depicts an uncomfortable reckoning with identity and members of her own community, those who, in Goldman-Sherman’s eyes, haven’t started the difficult work of healing intergenerational traumas and fears. Like this, the contributors of Toyon 71, ranging from various ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, abandon catharsis and lean into the discomfort needed to refuse the rhetoric of dehumanization and colonial violence.
Finally, Palestine requires that our art be a mobilizing force for Palestine whose primary purpose, as Tbhaki states, “is to gather others up with us, to generate within them an energy which their bodies cannot translate into anything but revolutionary movement.” This outcome is achieved in a number of ways throughout the book. Works such as Gigi Hyden’s “What Will You Say?” and Carey Tinsley’s “‘Community Conversations’...or Settler Colonial Normalization?” invite readers to learn about the history and join organizing efforts for Palestine. Toyon’s work in literary translation aims to spread hope, inspire collaboration, and affirm values of solidarity, community, and accessibility by translating works into Spanish, French, Arabic, and Italian. At times, this mobilizing work even involves a healthy critique of the movement’s unintended exclusions. In “Dispatches from Bed: On the Intersection of Disability Justice and Palestinian Liberation,” I.B. Bedrotting critiques the ableist assumptions of activist culture, showing how abled bodies are privileged in protest spaces and illuminating the challenges disabled people face while trying to participate in social justice movements. In doing so, Bedrotting makes a case for more accessible forms of organizing so that we might gather everyone – regardless of ability – in our work to end the mass disablement of Palestinian people and arrive at liberation.
Inspired by Tbhaki’s charge, we asked for your dispatches: your righteous anger, your hopes, your list of demands for peace, as well as your experiences during the protests that took place on college campuses around the world, including our own. You heard our call and reported from your position within the global intifada. “Intifada,” an Arabic word that translates to “uprising,” also means to “be shaken, shake oneself.” To globalize the intifada is to resist, to “shake off” and rise up against colonialism, apartheid, and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. The pieces in this collection work to reject Craft, center anti-colonial politics, connect the threads between the systems of oppression that harm us all, and support the work to dismantle them, all in service of a free Palestine within our lifetimes.
Take a deep breath.
You have in your hands Toyon 71: Dispatches From the Global Intifada.
Your assignment is to read through, to lean into the difficult emotions that arise, and to practice self-care alongside community-care. We’re calling on you to expand your sense of community: to globalize and extend beyond borders and binaries, to mobilize your compassion and care, to move, to shake off, to gesture towards a liberated future for us all.
Thank you for being here.
Now let’s get moving.
