The View from Gaza: A Special Issue from the Massachusetts Review

“What killed my son Abboud wasn’t just an American missile fired by an Israeli pilot. What killed my son was a regime whose very existence is defined by and built on expulsion and genocide.”

                          – Ahmed Abu Artema, co-organizer of Gaza’s Great March of Return

Gaza is asking all of us: what do we want our world to be? Gaza offers us a choice: will we move our world towards liberation and justice for all, or will we allow it to slip ever further into genocidal violence? The Massachusetts Review, under the guidance of guest editor Michel Moushabeck, is calling for Palestinian writers—especially Gazan authors, but also writers from elsewhere in Palestine as well as members of the Palestinian diaspora—to send us poetry, stories, essays, hybrid writing, and art for a special issue centered on Gaza. As Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud have argued in our pages, “Palestinians are one of the final reminders that a future without colonialism is possible.”

For this issue, we will accept submissions in English as well as Arabic and other languages; we will commission translations for non-English language work selected for publication. With this issue, we hope to amplify the work of Palestinian writers that contributes to the theory and critique of Empire and settler colonialism. We intend this issue to honor and commemorate voices from Gaza that have been silenced, and we also welcome submissions in all genres that center and celebrate life and resistance in Gaza beyond genocide and trauma.

Work for the special issue should be submitted to themassreview@gmail.com by June 15. There are no fees for submitting to this issue, and we will offer a $125 honorarium to all contributors accepted for the issue, payable when the issue is published in December 2024.