Upcoming book: Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine
Palestinian cartoonist, author, activist and former prisoner Mohammad Sabaaneh will soon release the graphic novel Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine, which was chosen as one of this week’s book of the week by Publishers Weekly.
Palestinian cartoonist, author, activist and former prisoner Mohammad Sabaaneh will soon release the graphic novel Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine, which was chosen as one of this week’s book of the week by Publishers Weekly.
In 2013 Israeli authorities detained Sabaaneh on the grounds of being linked to a terrorist group. He was held in Israeli prison for five months including two weeks of solitary confinement before being acquitted and released.
The experience profoundly changed Sabaaneh and how he depicts Palestinian prisoners in his cartoons.
Recently, over 250 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel went on a hunger strike to protest their relocation to isolated cells. Led by the militant Islamic Jihad group, this hunger strike comes amid heightened tensions in Israeli confinement following the escape and subsequent recapture of six prisoners from a high-security prison last month. Israel is currently holding more than 4,600 Palestinians some of whom are teenagers who simply took part in demonstrations.
In response to this news, Sabanneh has been using the number 6 (representing the 6 prisoners who escaped) with the shape of Palestine/Israel cut out of it.
Sabaaneh says that his intention is to use graffiti to challenge the occupation and to make the voices of the Palestinian people heard.
Mohammad Sabaaneh did not draw the pages of Power Born of Dreams (Street Noise Books; November 9, 2021), but instead used linocut printing.
“I was unable to carve my name onto the walls of my prison cell,” he wrote in his forthcoming book’s preface. “I’ve long wondered how prisoners are able to carve their names into those rough prison walls. For this reason I’ve decided to carve their stories and share them with the world.”
Watch Sabaaneh’s video on his graphic novel in this video. Click this link to view video or use the widget below:
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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