resistance

This new translation brings together two of Algerian author Maïssa Bey's important works for the first time in English. Do You Hear in the Mountains... is a compelling piece of autofiction in which three destinies meet dramatically on a train moving through France. We meet an Algerian refugee, whom we recognize as Bey herself. She has escaped the civil war and cannot forget her father's commitment to independence nor his death under the torture of the French soldiers.

Leïla Sebbar's novel recounts an event in French history that has been hidden for many years. Toward the end of the Algerian war, the FLN, an Algerian nationalist party, organized a demonstration in Paris to oppose a curfew imposed upon Algerians in France. About 30,000 Algerians gathered peacefully, but the protest was brutally suppressed by the Paris police. Between 50 and 200 Algerians were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Seine. This incident provides the background for a more intimate look into the history of violence between France and Algeria.

The internationally acclaimed writer Assia Djebar portrays the interlocking lives of women and men in an Algerian mountain town, plunged into a protracted anti-colonial struggle against France in the 1950s. Children of the New World, written one year before Algerian independence, reveals the escalating conflict from the perspectives of a variety of characters - traditional wives, radicalized students, and political organizers.

“This honest man, this good man, this man who never did wrong to anyone, who devoted his life to the public good, and who was one of the greatest writers in Algeria, has been murdered. . . .

Rights in Rebellion examines the global discourse of human rights and its influence on the local culture, identity, and forms of resistance.

An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements.

Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later turned into a galvanizing cinematic experience by co-directors Guy Davidi and Burnat.

Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross injustice and hardship in her early life: her brother, father and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. She learned Spanish and turned to catechistic work as an expression of political revolt as well as religious commitment. Menchú vividly conveys the traditional beliefs of her community and her personal response to feminist and socialist ideas.

"Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools."

That's how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt.

Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.