Holiday Giving, 2024
By ArabLit Staff, with the wider community
We have, in the past, run holiday-gift listicles. This year, we focus on gifts where profits go to community support, mutual aid, and on-the-ground assistance — particularly to communities in Palestine, Sudan, and Lebanon. If you have suggestions about what we should add, please add in the comments or email info@arablit.org.
Books in English
Tabkha, by Mona Zahed (Slingshot Books)
From the publisher:
Writing from her tent in Gaza, chef Mona Zahed shares twenty of her ancestral recipes, lovingly nurtured and recalled.
Each dish is illustrated by a different artist, creating a visual feast as delicious as the food itself. Connoisseurs of Palestinian cuisine and newcomers alike will be nourished by Mona’s Tabkha.
After October 2023, Mona lost her catering business, her home, her husband’s workplace, and so much more to settler colonial violence. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go directly to the author and her community.
Note: because delivery is expected in March 2025, those interested in gifting the book will be provided with a printable gift voucher, as seen below. Pre-order here.
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Disruptions, by Taysir Batnaji (Loose Joints Studio)
From the publisher:
Batniji’s disrupted images visualise both the current violence and historical repression imposed on Palestine through digitally degraded images of video calls with his family in Gaza.
Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji’s diverse practice is often tinged with impermanence and fragility, drawing inspiration from his subjective experience and its relation to current events and history. In Disruptions, Batniji collects fragmented screenshots taken between 24 April 2015 and 23 June 2017 during several WhatsApp video conversations with his mother and family in Gaza. Settled in Europe and unable to return to his homeland for years, this digital commons provided a crucial meeting ground for Batniji and his family: a digital space nonetheless shaped and destabilised by the same forces affecting the artist’s relatives in everyday life.
Disruptions oscillates between the casual domestic language of the family phonecall and warped, degraded compositions, saturated with colour, obliterated with pixels, eradicated by distance. Through resolution and compression, Batniji’s poor images politically visualize how communication and daily life in Gaza are compromised by conflict, control and surveillance. In their noise and visual obliqueness, Batniji creates a thread between common intimacy and the colonial, now genocidal violence imposed upon Gaza to date, while evoking the physical and emotional separation that occurs across borders.
100% of the profits will go towards the NGO Medical Aid for Palestinians. Get the book here.
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Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture, ed. Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia (Saqi Books)From the publisher:
“Daybreak in Gaza is a record of an extraordinary place and people, and of a culture preserved by the people themselves. Vignettes of artists, acrobats, doctors, students, shopkeepers and teachers offer stories of love, life, loss and survival. They display the wealth of Gaza’s cultural landscape and the breadth of its history.”
All profits go to Medical Aid for Palestinians. Order here.
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Books by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha for HEAL Palestine.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s 2024 National Book Award-winning Something About Living is currently sold out, but you can still get one of her earlier books, Kaan and Her Sisters or Water & Salt.
All book proceeds and donation funds will be sent to HEAL Palestine, a humanitarian organization chosen by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.
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All books at the Workshops 4 Gaza bookshop.
We haven’t read them all, but particularly recommend as gifts with wide appeal: The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, by Laila El-Haddad; for literature lovers, Maya Abu al-Hayyat’s wonderful novel No One Knows Their Blood Type, tr. Hazem Jamjoum or Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost; for thoughtful recipients, Isabella Hammad’s Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative; for sci-fi lovers Thyme Travelers, a collection of Palestinian spec fic; for poets, Fady Joudah’s shattering […] and/or Maya Abu al-Hayyat’s warm and beautiful You Can Be the Last Leaf.
All proceeds from books bought here go to CRIPS FOR ESIMS FOR GAZA, a mutual aid collective which helps keep Palestinians connected to the internet.
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I Found Myself in Palestine: Stories of Love and Renewal from around the Globe, ed. Nora Lester Murad (Olive Branch Press, 2020).
This is a collection of personal reflections on the experience of being a foreigner in Palestine. Contributors include: Pam Bailey, Mariam Barghouti, Thimna Bunte, Jonathan Cook, Helene Furani, Fatima Gabru, Neta Golan Kamal, Nadia Hasan, Donn Hutchison, Didi Kanaaneh, Andrew Karney, Maria Khoury, Corina Mamani, Cody O’Rourke, Carolyn Quffa, Rina Rosenberg, Marty Rosenbluth, Ann Saba, Samira Safadi, Zeena Salman, Steve Sosebee, Saul Jihad Takahashi, and Trees Zbidat-Kosterman.
All proceeds except for shipping fees will be donated to families in Gaza experiencing urgent needs.
Books in French
De Gaza à Jénine. Tant que la guerre durera, auteur Dominique Le Nen, préface d’Alain Gresh, postface d’Irène Frachon (L’Harmattan). Les bénéfices de vente de l’ouvrage seront intégralement reversés à l’Association Franco-Palestinienne pour l’Aide et la Formation Médicale (AMANI)
30 secondes à Gaza, Mohammad Sabaaneh (Alifbata). LES BÉNÉFICES DU LIVRES SERONT DÉDIÉS À LA POPULATION DE GAZA.
Que ma mort apporte l’espoir: Poèmes de gaza, Sélection, traduction et préface de Nada Yafi, postface de Karim Kattan. Édition bilingue arabe-français. (Les éditions Libertalia)
Books in Spanish
30 segundos en Gaza, Mohammad Sabaaneh (Fundación Al Fanar). 100% de los beneficios para Gaza @cocinaXpalestina.
Pottery
Jane Booth Ceramics is selling these mugs; 100% will go to families in Gaza.
Artwork
Young Sudanese artist Muhammad Mustafa Abu Al-Hassan (find more about him here) is currently in Sudan whose trying to provide for his family through his art. He can do pencil portraits and commissions. Please contact him through his instagram to find out about rates.
MSF Sudan is auctioning off art to raise funds for people affected by war in Sudan.
AL LALOBA features vibrant Sudanese sticker and postcard designs, and every purchase supports Sudanese artists and humanitarian organizations on the ground. Find them on Etsy.
Audio
“City of Light” will feature a full day program on December 14 to learn from Lebanese history, resilience, and resistance, and an evening of music highlighting artists of the Lebanese diaspora. The evening program’s audio will be streamed by Radio Alhara, Operator Radio and Echobox Radio for those that won’t be able to attend the event.
Half of the funds will support Riwaq Beirut, a music and community space actively leading relief efforts by providing hot meals, medical supplies, and essential items to displaced individuals in Beirut. The remaining funds will be distributed among local NGOs focused on children’s education and psychological support, aid for migrant workers abandoned by employers, grassroots assistance for families in Gaza, and direct action initiatives in the Netherlands.
Soap
LUSH is selling watermelon-slice soap where “100% of the profits will be donated solely to projects providing urgently-needed professional mental health support and trauma counselling for children in Gaza and the West Bank.”
If you buy soap at Kandaka Naturals, you will help support Safe2Bleed Sudan, sending menstrual pads and dignity kids to women in Sudan.
General support
Find more to support through the Sudan solidarity collective or Nas Al Sudan. Also donate to Africans Trapped in Lebanon.
Find a fundraiser to support through Gaza funds or Sudan funds.
Work that generally supports Palestinian, mutual-aid, and community initiatives
Buy your loved ones a Hirbawi kufiya.
If you’re in the US, get them one of the many gifts (apparel, art, jewelry, more) at Watan Studio.
Or if you’re in Europe, shop Disarming Design Palestine.