The Middle East Institute, The Foundation for Middle East Peace and Just World Books Present:
A cookbook and more than a cookbook, The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey brings together traditional recipes from the Gaza Strip based on extensive interviews with home cooks, and uses profiles of these cooks as well as beautiful documentary photography to explore the history, economy and daily life of the territory. Authors Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt present an intimate perspective never offered in the media: how conflict and siege play out in the daily lives of ordinary people, and how people-particularly women-manage to create little spaces of vitality and joy in the midst of it all.
Moreover, the cuisine itself is extraordinary: the 120 fully kitchen-tested recipes in the book showcase a culinary tradition which-as Claudia Roden wrote in her review-"has more pronounced flavors, more herby, spicy, peppery, lemony than that of [its] regional neighbors." Join us as we celebrate the launch of this exceptional work that provides rare insight into Gaza's culture and cuisine.
To RSVP email info@fmep.org or call 202 835 3650
Biographies:
Laila Haddad is author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between and co-author of The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, is a blogger, political analyst, social activist, and parent-of-three from Gaza City. She is a contributing author to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, and a policy advisor with al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. She has been published in the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, The New Statesman, The Daily Star, Le monde diplomatique, and has appeared on CNN, NPR, and Al Jazeera. Since November 2004, she has authored an award-winning blog now known as Gaza Mom.
Maggie Schmitt is a writer, researcher, translator, educator, and social activist. She holds a B.A. from Harvard in Literature and has conducted advanced graduate studies in Social Anthropology and Mediterranean Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She was one of the creators of Precarias a la Deriva, a Madrid-based project that used innovative methods of collective storytelling and cartography to chart the changing relationship between work and life for young women in the city. She did research and production for the collaborative musical project Beyond Digital in Morocco, looking at the contemporary Berber folk-revival and its relationship to digital technology, and creating the video elements of the related app: "Sufi Plug-Ins."