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Join Pilsen Community Books and the Palestine Festival of Literature for the Chicago launch of Tareq Baconi's new book What Now? On Palestine, Freedom and Our Global Future.

Palestine is a litmus test for our global future. The ongoing genocide is showcasing what it means for Palestinians to be taken to the brink of extermination. The outcome will have repercussions that will go beyond the Middle East, extending outward across the world, and will determine whether the struggle for decolonization will succeed or fail, whether our world will move toward collective freedom or fascism. Drawing from Tareq Baconi’s extensive academic and organizing work with Palestinian and international activists, and from decades of long-standing strategies, What Now? distills three strategic principles for a free Palestine to guide activists and allies: refuse the prospect of a divided homeland, reclaim the historic revolutionary politics at the heart of the Palestinian struggle, and decompose Zionism.

Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. His work has appeared in, among others, The New York Times and The Baffler, and he contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has also written for film; his award-winning BFI short One Like Him, a queer love story set in Jordan, screened in over thirty festivals. He is the author of What Now?, Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, and Fire in Every Direction.

Eman Abdelhadi is a Chicago-based scholar, organizer, and writer. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and author of the forthcoming Impossible Futures: Why Women Leave Muslim Communities. With M.E. O'Brien, she co-edited the forthcoming science fiction anthology When We Win: Dispatches from Revolutionary Futures and co-authored the novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052–2072. Together they also co-edit the revolutionary fiction website Project 2052. Her scholarship, poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. A long-time organizer, she is currently active in Scholars for Justice, Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine, and the AAUP at the University of Chicago.

Entry to the event is free, but if you would like to help cover the cost of Tareq Baconi's travel to Chicago, you can purchase a $5 ticket.