This Is How We Survive

I'm reviewing this book mainly because barely any reviews came up when I searched for them (promotional blurbs don't count), which is disappointing. There's a lot to talk about, & it deserves serious engagement.

For me, the central portion of the book covers Mai'a's years in Egypt, where she first ended up after getting jailed (with her kid) & kicked out of Palestine by israel, & eventually leaves after basically being harassed out of the loose activist “community” she tried to foster through the revolution. The themes built upon from the chapters about her earlier transnational experiences, of simultaneous solidarity & conflict with others in struggle, state violence & “intracommunal” policing, really come to a head. The constant misogynoir she mentions almost in passing seems to practically reach a fever pitch in Cairo, which she is careful to remind readers is an African city. At some point, my gut reaction to her the drawn-out collapse of Cairo's revolutionary milieu just became “Ugh, what a parade of terrible fucking people!! Why is she putting up with any of this shit??”

For me, the book's strength is that she doesn't necessarily try to answer it directly. Instead, she explains what happened, what she felt, how she [re]acted at the time—including the explanations she gave when she was asked over the course of events, rather than “looking back”. I liked this & think it worked out well, especially because the intro/foreword, which does try to do a little bit of the “here are the lessons” thing, wasn't to my liking. I preferred to read her story & draw my own conclusions, whether or not they were the same as hers.

The “Revolutionary Mothering” subtitle plays out in this fashion too. Rather than try to give some list of do's & don'ts for raising a children in social movements, her child Aza is simply the most important character in the story after herself. (Much more important than the father, who isn't absent, but is just…another person.) Rather than describe children & mothers as burdens or boons to social movements in an abstract way, Mai'a & Aza encounter people with these attitudes (or situations that might raise these questions) & respond however they do.

I originally read the title of the book, This is How We Survive, as didactic, but I don't think the book itself is so. I think it's better understood as “these are the things we do to survive as [aspiring] revolutionaries”, with the freedom/responsibility of deciding what to do with that knowledge & those experiences being given to the reader. I hope more people, especially those who have the kind of transnational mobility Mai'a has, check this book out, if only to know that others have taken similar paths before them & should be listened to.