Rifqa is Mohammed El-Kurd’s debut collection of poetry, written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanafani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature. The book narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah--an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations. The book, named after the author’s late grandmother who was forced to flee from Haifa upon the genocidal establishment of Israel, makes the observation that home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of 1948 Nakba, but are in fact a continuation of it: a legalized, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.

Leaving Islam for Christianity cost her more than she imagined, but gave more than she could have dreamed. Rifqa Bary grew up in a devout Muslim home, obediently following her parents’ orders to practice the rituals of Islam. But God was calling her to freedom and love. He was calling her to true faith. He was calling her to give up everything. Hiding in the Light is the story of Rifqa’s remarkable spiritual journey from Islam to Christianity. It is also the untold story of how she ran from her father’s threats to find refuge with strangers in Florida, only to face a controversial court case that reached national headlines. Most of all, it is the story of a young girl who made life-changing sacrifices to follow Jesus—and who inspires us to do the same.

“A beautiful but urgent clarion call for freedom, justice, and resistance in every pocket of the world, from occupied Palestine to gentrified Brooklyn” (Marc Lamont Hill, academic and activist). we are the boat / returning to dock / we are the footprints / on the northern trail / we are the iron / coloring the soil / we cannot / be erased —from “Refugee” Remi Kanazi’s poetry presents an unflinching look at the lives of Palestinians under occupation and as refugees scattered across the globe. He captures the Palestinian people’s stubborn refusal to be erased, gives voice to the ongoing struggle for liberation, and explores the meaning of international solidarity. In this latest collection, Kanazi expands his focus outside the sphere of Palestine and presents pieces examining racism in America, police brutality, US militarism at home and wars abroad, conflict voyeurism, Islamophobia, and a range of other issues. “His rhymes and rhythms, filled with sharp wit, irony and deep empathy, are a great joy to read even as they tackle some of the most urgent political struggles of our day.” —Ali Abunimah, author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was a happy little girl growing up in Sri Lanka, especially when I was with my mother. I always wanted to be by her side. Her big, beautiful smile warmed me, and her hearty laugh echoed throughout the house. #2 I was born a Muslim, and I accepted it as normal. I had no idea what Islam meant for me or the people around me, but I knew that it was who I was and what I would always be. #3 I had a traumatic injury when I was six years old, which left me with a severely damaged eye. But the most surprising loss was the change in how my family treated me, as if they felt I had become a burden. #4 I remember finding a stray kitten, for example, and bringing him a bowl of milk every day. My parents wouldn’t allow me to touch him, but one morning, my mother allowed me to bring the kitten along.

"On the backwater planet of Brynner, at Persephone Station, a community of android refugees, all female, are hiding since they were able to awaken their AI and escape servitude. But the Serrao-Orlov Corporation is nothing if not tenacious, especially about it's proprietary AI's, and it wants their property back. However, Persephone is run by Rosie, and they are in charge of an organized group of beneficent criminals and assassins, along with a bunch of worn mercenaries who have a thing for doing the honorable thing, despite the odds. And in a fight with the Serrao-Orlov Corporation, the odds are not going to be good, but it would be a glorious fight. Award-nominated author Stina Leicht has created a visciously feminist take on The Magnificent Seven by the way of Blade Runner and Westworld"--

UpSet Press has restored to print Suheir Hammad's first book of poems, Born Palestinian, Born Black, originally published by Harlem River Press in 1996. The new edition is augmented with a new author's preface, and new poems, under the heading, The Gaza Suite, as well as a new publisher's note by Zohra Saed, an introduction by Marco Villalobos, and an afterword by Kazim Ali.

What is political poetry? How does history become lived experience? What does it mean to bear witness through writing? Noor Hindi’s poems explore colonialism, religion, patriarchy and everything in between with sharp wit and innovative precision. Layered to reflect the intersections of her identity, while constantly interrogating this identity itself, her writing combines lyrical beauty with political urgency. This collection is ultimately a provocation―on trauma, on art, on what it takes to change the world.

Writing into the wounds and reverberations of the Israel/Palestine conflict, Philip Metres’ fourth book of poems, Shrapnel Maps, is at once elegiac and activist, an exploratory surgery to extract the slivers of cartography through palimpsest and erasure. A wedding in Toura, a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, uneasy interactions between Arab and Jewish neighbors in University Heights, the expulsion of Palestinians in Jaffa, another bombing in Gaza: Shrapnel Maps traces the hurt and tender places, where political noise turns into the voices of Palestinians and Israelis. Working with documentary flyers, vintage postcards, travelogues, cartographic language, and first person testimonies, Shrapnel Maps ranges from monologue sonnets to prose vignettes, polyphonics to blackouts, indices to simultaneities, as Palestinians and Israelis long for justice and peace, for understanding and survival.

Brooklynite Hammad may be the first Palestinian-American to make it big in the spoken-word, or performance poetry, scene: she took part in Russell Simmons's Tony Award-winning Def Poetry Jam and has read on (among other venues) National Public Radio. Her first collection is also the first book from the Cypher imprint, edited by spoken-word elder statesman Willie Perdomo. Inspired both by her links to the Arab world and by the styles and stances of such earlier poet-performers as Nikki Giovanni, Hammad celebrates and defends her heritage ("i want to be open and hide/ the children of Palestine within me") and can be equally passionate about daily life in her home borough: "if you can make it here/ you got nothing to fear," the poem called "brooklyn" says. With the book comes a CD of Hammad in energetic performance, including a brief interview with the poet's father (subject of her poem "daddy's song") and, apparently, a bag of the Mideastern spice zataar. Leading off the CD is one of Hammad's best poems, the ironic "mic check," whose title refers to sound equipment and to an airport search performed by a hapless guy named Mike. (Jan.).--

Birthright is a book that balances the weight of place. The pride and shame and worth of homeland. Palestine, a homeland under siege and under scrutiny from a world that doesn't occupy its borders. It is a book of immense nuance, pulling together all corners of the author's pride in home, but also a desire to understand the violent cycles of the American machinery of war.