If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose

This searing posthumous anthology from Alareer (editor of Gaza Writes Back), a Palestinian poet and English professor who was killed by an Israeli air strike in 2023, collects his heart-wrenching reflections on living amid violence and deprivation in Gaza. Meditating on the power of narrative, he recounts how his mother’s stories provided veiled guidance on surviving a “world controlled by soldiers and guns and death,” and how he published short stories by friends and students as a testament to Palestinian resilience and creativity. The satire is darkly mordant, as when Alareer outlines his “modest proposal” for Israel to resolve its conflict with Hamas by eating all Gazans. Throughout, Alareer offers harrowing glimpses of life behind Israel’s blockade, describing how an Israeli soldier once knocked him unconscious with a rock while “grinning from ear to ear” and how his children silently shook in bed as they listened to the screams of the wounded after an air strike. Most unsettling of all is how the contrast between Alareer’s restrained prose and the violence he describes drives home the routine nature of the brutality (“We have grown accustomed to war”). The showstopping poem from which the collection takes its title will leave few readers with dry eyes (“If I must die/ let it bring hope/ let it be a tale”). Offering a deeply personal window on Israeli violence in Gaza, this shouldn’t be missed. (Dec.)