Böcker av Yaffa As

A love letter to liberation, from Palestine to the ground beneath your feet.When you think of freedom, where are you? And where are you headed? Letters from a Living Utopia invites readers to engage with utopia as both a destination and a lived reality starting with the ground beneath our feet. Dreaming of freedom from the displaced and occupied realities of Palestine, Mx Yaffa builds bridges between the historical struggle for liberation and self-determination and the everyday, intimate, and interconnected ways that we build freedom where we are, through care, healing, and bonds of solidarity. Letters from a Living Utopia is a remarkable journey to a world in formation, emergent in our resilience and our repair, our spiritual grounding and our non-attachment, our love and joy, and our sustainable and sustaining relations to the earth in its abundance.Key chapters explore:Utopia in Practice: Practical guidance on living aspects of utopia today, starting the transformative journey, and creating a utopian world.Utopia and Wellbeing: The importance of rest and spirituality for a balanced, harmonious life.Utopia in Society: Addressing systemic injustice, interpersonal harm, and moving beyond traditional systems and conflicts.Utopia and Identity: Embracing queer identities, transcending language barriers, and promoting co-creation, self-actualization, and belonging.Utopia in Relationships: Building a utopian society through safety, healthy interaction practices, and foundational relationships. The Essence ofUtopia: Highlighting hope, joy, faith, love, and the erotic nature of utopia's emotional and spiritual dimensions.Utopia in Personal Growth: Discussing non-attachment, moving beyond pleasure, forgiveness, and the role of vision and contradiction in personal development.Utopia in Sustainability and Intentions: Sustainable practices and the power of intentions in nurturing our souls in pursuit of utopia.

"Blood Orange" is a highly emotional, important and timely poetry collection by Mx. Yaffa (They/She), a trans Muslim displaced Indigenous Palestinian. Their writings probe the yearning for home, belonging, mental health, queerness, transness, and other dimensions of marginalization while nurturing dreams of utopia against the background of ongoing displacement and genocide of indigenous Palestinians. The collection came quickly and relentlessly, drawn from the depths of the author's soul during a movement for a free Palestine and aligned with a solar eclipse. It beckons readers to re-evaluate what is perceived as immutable and to imagine pathways toward Utopia. "Blood Orange"- the title an homage to the Yaffa Oranges (which were appropriated first by the British and subsequently by Israel) refers to the author themselves, their homeland and blood spilled in the name of settler colonialism. This highly charged and cathartic body of work confronts the anguish and loss inflicted by genocide but also embraces a vision of a world free of it. The poems within "Blood Orange" were a means of working through and processing the grief caused by recent events and serve as an act of protest and defiance against settler colonialism as a whole.