EVERY MOMENT IS A LIFE: Gaza in the Time of Genocide, the title says it all

EVERY MOMENT IS A LIFE: Gaza in the Time of Genocide
SUSAN ABULHAWA (ed.) with Palestine Writes Literature Festival
Atria Books/One Signal Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 10 February 2026

Rating: 5* of five for existing when so many want it not to

The Publisher Says: Compiled by bestselling author susan abulhawa, an Arabic-English bilingual anthology of essays from eighteen young Palestinian writers trying to survive the genocide in Gaza.

In early 2024, writer and activist susan abulhawa managed to enter Gaza twice through the Rafah crossing. There, at the Culture and Free Thought Association, susan held a series of workshops for young people who had been displaced to tent encampments. The lives of all participants were marked by unrelenting Israeli violence and extraordinary loss—of home, family, safety, education, electricity, and all the structures of life. They’d fled from place to place as Israel’s colonial violence swirled around them, complete with food and water insecurity and constant threat. Still, despite the bitterness of life in tents and the dangers of travel, they came together to share in the refuge of writing and community.

Samya recounts a tender moment with an old man mending shoes in the street, while her cousin Saja hides books in her closet, hoping they and her home will still be there when she returns. Ghassan is haunted by the baby he rescued from the rubble, who for a time became his son. Fatima risks it all retrieve her clothes from a danger zone buzzing with drones and warplanes. Maram’s loving aunt is gone, and chaos inhabits Amr’s mind. Samah, Lubna, Rizq, and Nebal take us by the hand through raining death, trails of tears, classroom shelters, and shared clothes in crowded tents.

Every Moment Is a Life delivers rare, unfiltered portraits of life under genocide, platforming the emerging voices struggling to survive in Gaza today. These essays are raw and real, capturing human moments—buying bread, going to the bathroom, sharing a meal, drinking coffee—all set against the backdrop of history’s first livestreamed ethnic cleansing. With courage, anger, love, agony, and—impossibly—hope, these achingly tender voices from Gaza will stay with us, captured in these pages, forever.

*All proceeds go to the contributors in Gaza and to Palestine Writes Literature Festival

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The strongly anti-Israel...not anti-semitic, none of this is directed at Jews only at the State of Israel as a political actor...indictment of the genocide in Gaza is going to make a lot of y'all really mad that anyone dares criticize Israel.

There is zero difference between that criticism and the MAGA scum who insist it's un-American to criticize ICE for its brutality.

That is a hill I will plant my flag on. If criticism is not allowed freedom is not present.

The stories, personal ones, told in these essays are deeply affecting. It is the memory-book of a people beinng erased by power structures that simply do not want to accept their existence. I, and I think many of y'all, believe that is immoral. If you don't, then accept that it is explicitly illegal. If that fails to convince you this activity should stop, the course should be reversed, and improvements made in the lives of Palestinians, I think you should be held up to shame and not allowed to forget your complicity in the same crime that gave birth to Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Enough said.