Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture
Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture is a powerful collection of essays, testimonies and reflections edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller. It brings together over 300 contributors writing from Gaza and beyond amid the ongoing genocide. The result is a powerful, often raw, and consistently moving testimony of a society facing annihilation—yet still holding on to its history and humanity.
The book was compiled in just three months after the launch of Israel’s devastating assault on the besieged enclave in 2023. Amid bombardment, displacement and communication blackouts, contributors shared their testimony and offered their reflections.
Some sent voice notes in the dead of night; others relayed fragments of their testimony through broken connections. Together, the pieces offer a moving and powerful glimpse into Gaza’s inner life—the homes people were building, the memories they hold, the art they continue to create, and the futures they refuse to let go of.
There are stories in the volume that are piercing. In the opening chapter, Journalist Ahmed Mortaja writes painfully about her fears as Israel launched its war of annihilation on the people of Gaza.
“I’m worried that my name might become breaking news” writes Mortaja. “Like when they say: ‘So-and-so number of bodies have been recovered during a violent bombardment of different areas. Then I’ll become a plain number, added to the counter which has not stopped counting to this moment. I wouldn’t like it for my name and my family’s name to become numbers, odd or even.”
Heba Almaqadma’s testimony captures the horror of realising Israel seeks nothing less than extermination: “If only I had known to plan for a genocide, I would have cherished those last moments at home, my last night in a bed, my last morning coffee, my last kibbe dipped in hummus, my last day at work, my last laugh, my last birthday celebration, my last everything”, writes Almaqadma reflecting on the last time she left her home. “If only I had known, I would have packed up a few of those memories with me.”
Others bear witness not only to the destruction of lives and homes, but to the deliberate obliteration of knowledge and memory—the epistemicide unfolding around them. Asmaa Mustafa, who lost her personal library, writes with bitter irony about burning her books to keep her family warm: “Books used to ignite our thoughts. Now books feed our children.” Her words capture the desperation of a society forced to sacrifice its intellectual heritage for survival, after Israel cut off food, fuel and hope.
Contributors evoke the spirit of Sumud, a defiant steadfastness that underpins the Palestinian struggle to exist, endure and resist erasure. Maisara Baroud, a displaced artist, writes how “drawing has become the special way to help [me]overcome death.” Doctor Mohammed Aghaalkurdi recalls the resilience of children flying kites against Israeli warplanes: “Colourful kites made of thin paper by delicate hands compete with heavy warplanes guided by monsters – yet sometimes the kites outnumber the machines in the sky and win.”
There are testimonies of women describing the double burden of resisting Israel’s genocide. “To be a woman in this world, you are doubly victimised – from the occupation, from the current situation, from the community,” writes Noor Swirki. “Even the relief aid that we are receiving doesn’t take into consideration our needs as women. The response to our demands related to hygiene is weak. We are suffering from all of these multiple issues.”
One of the most striking threads running through Daybreak in Gaza is its refusal to let Palestinian culture, memory, and imagination be erased, even as the physical world around them is being raised to the ground.
In our podcast conversation, both editors spoke of their desire to highlight the life, work and spirit of Gaza's people, not just the scale of its destruction. “The story of the city is the story of its people,” said Muna. “We wanted to highlight the life and the work of people, the fabric of society.”
Muna described the genocide not only as the loss of homes and lives, but as the destruction of creative projects—art, literature, education—that make up the social and cultural architecture of the Palestinian people.
For Teller, the book was a way to respond to what he saw as a collective failure of the publishing world to engage with the urgency of the situation in Gaza. As the horror unfolded after October 7, he felt a deep responsibility to act. “It felt like a moral imperative,” said Teller.
With Teller’s background in journalism and publishing, he felt a book could achieve what headlines and statements couldn’t. That is create space for Palestinians to speak directly on their own terms. He began reaching out to writers, activists, and artists, and within months, what began as a conversation transformed into a book.
Daybreak in Gaza also reflects the religious and ethnic diversity of Palestine. One of the most striking contributions comes from Nabil Tarazi, a Palestinian Christian, “For us, Gaza is a symbol, a place that has stood for so many years against aggression, occupation and genocide. Today, at last, the world is seeing who the Palestinians are – we are human, ordinary human beings – symbolised in what is going on in Gaza every day. Gaza matters because it is the place where the rebirth of the Palestinian nation will probably begin.”
The choice of Daybreak as the book’s title was no accident. It does not claim that dawn has arrived but that even in the darkest hour of Palestinian history, its first light can be found in the act of writing, remembering and resisting Israel’s war of extermination.
Recounting the comments of one of the contributors in the book, Teller said that bearing testimony to Israel’s genocide had given her the strength to continue. The idea of daybreak signals that this is not just a book of history, but also of survival and possible futures for a people subjected to one of the worst crimes in modern history.
Hope, said Muna in our podcast, quoting Mahmoud Darwish, is an incurable disease. Darwish wrote that as a Palestinian people "we cultivate hope" and not simply harvest it.
The book has been widely praised. Novelist Isabella Hammad calls it “a love letter to Gaza. A heartbreaking testament to the steadfastness of the human spirit.” Lawyer and writer Philippe Sands describes it as “a most significant collection, essential reading for our troubled times.” Author China Miéville calls it “a profoundly moving collection.” These endorsements reflect the book’s success in transcending journalism or documentation: it is both literary and urgent, archival and alive.
What makes the collection so powerful is that it is not merely a chronicle of suffering, though it bears witness to the destruction of lives and the assault on people facing erasure and extermination by a US-backed military waging a genocidal war. These essays also affirm life, preserve memory, and carry the embers of hope for a nation enduring its darkest hour.
