The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story with Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Palestinian journalist and historian Ramzy Baroud will speak on his new book The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story. At this critical juncture in Palestine’s history, with Trump’s recent declaration on Jerusalem and the Likud party vote to annex West Bank settlements, Dr. Baroud’s narrative of Palestinian dispossession, resistance, and resilience is important and timely. The book will be available for purchase ($20, cash preferred) and there will be a book signing after his talk, which will include analysis of current events.

Presented by the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice.
Admission is free.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a US-Arab journalist, media consultant, an author, internationally-syndicated columnist, Editor of Palestine Chronicle (1999-present), former Managing Editor of London-based Middle East Eye (2014-15), and former Deputy Managing Editor of Al Jazeera online. He taught mass communication at Australia’s Curtin University of Technology, Malaysia Campus. Baroud is the author of three books and a contributor to many others; his latest volume is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London, 2010). His forthcoming book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story. His books have been translated to several languages including French, Turkish, Arabic, Korean, among others. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. He has been a guest speaker at many top universities around the world and conducted book tours in over twenty countries.

THE LAST EARTH is a non-fictional narrative of modern Palestinian history. It is a unique rendition of people’s history – an account of how major historic events in Palestine and the greater Middle East impacted ordinary people, as well as how that mass of people, in their tenacity, and even in their dispossession, represent a force that determines history.

Mixing the academic discipline of ‘History from Below’ and a refined literary style, this collection of narrative-based accounts challenges the perception that Palestinians, mostly refugees, are irrelevant in shaping their own history and the attempt by Zionist historians and institutions to replace the Palestinian historical narrative with a Zionist one.

Its nine chapters contain complex characters whose stories overlap, creating echo after resounding echo of their profound collective experience. Each chapter, read individually, is like an icon for the experience of an entire generation. When read as a whole, the book tells the story of a people whose history cannot be reduced to a timeline of conflict but rather is embroidered and torn with complex human emotions, hopes, dreams, struggles and priorities that seem to pay no heed to politics, the military balance or ideological rivalries.