The good news and the bad news concerning this book both spring from the same unfortunate circumstance: this book is already dated. This is bad news, of course, because the people of Syria, probably many of them contributors to this book, are now living under two dreadful regimes instead of just one. Whatever hope they once had has almost certainly been dashed. In fact, one wonders how many of these contributors are even still alive. I went to look up a YouTube video of one of the videos that was mentioned in this book, and beneath the video (Abu Eskandar) was a link to a Facebook page. But when I clicked on the link all I got was the message, "Sorry, this page isn't available." It immediately called to mind the ending of another contribution in this book, where the author rings the cellphone of a friend, only to receive the reply from a strange voice: "The owner of this phone is dead. We killed him."
Still, for you the reader there is some positive here. This is like a snapshot into one particular moment of time. This is a snapshot into a moment in Syria when the Arab people, like other Arab peoples in Egypt, Libya, etc., actually felt a rising of hope, a feeling that their lives might finally be taking a turn for the better. It is a snapshot into the large majority of the people (I am assuming they are the majority; I am hoping they are the majority) who are not the fanatics, either governmental of fundamentalist, that we are always reading about or watching on the news. These are the people who simply want to go about their lives, be in peace with their neighbors, and not have to fear for their lives every time they step into the street. And that his may be as good a snapshot as we are ever likely to get makes this volume even more compelling. Like any compilation, of course, some of these contributions are better than others, but they are all worth reading, and the artwork itself is worth the price of admission. Buy it; read it!
(Note: I think the most frustrating part of this book, at least personally, is the realization that there is really little to nothing that we (meaning the U.S.) can do about this. That as much as we might want to rush over and help put things right, the most likely result, as we ought to have learned by now, would only be the opposite, that it would just make matters worse. It makes you want to pull your hair out).
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L.W
Protest art from revolution & revolt
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 11, 2015
DryRot
This book changed me.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 3, 2016Miri
This is a moving, well edited and well translated ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 9, 2016
