Book: We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: a Memoir of Love and Resistance
Author: Linda Sarsour
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs 599
When Linda Sarsour was a young woman in community college in the United States of America, her ambition was to become an English teacher; she could see herself mentoring high school students in her native Brooklyn. But when her personal convictions were confronted by the fallout of world events — the suffering of the people of her native Palestine, the overnight demonization of Muslims in the US in the wake of 9/11, her son’s classmate saying, “You Muslims are good at math because you need to know how to make bombs” — Sarsour found another way to make a difference. We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders does not just cover Sarsour’s accomplishments and her attempts to bring the needs of marginalized communities into the spotlight. It also explores her own values, primarily through her no-holds-barred approach towards talking about the incidents that caused her the greatest anguish.
Sarsour is tough. As an organizer of the Women’s March — the largest single-day protest in the history of the US in the wake of the election of a notoriously racist and misogynistic president — and a prominent voice in the justice community, it is impossible to keep on resisting the forces of oppression and hate without cultivating a remarkable degree of fortitude. It is, however, precisely this toughness that renders Sarsour’s empathy for those who have been oppressed or marginalized entirely real. Sarsour never presents herself as a victim in her writing or in her activism. When her son’s classmate’s comment makes her cry, her son is quick to say, “This is not serious. I’m really okay”. His response — a normalization of racism that would be a familiar coping mechanism for anyone who grows up different — makes Sarsour’s perspective shift. “[N]othing was more important... than what he or his sisters needed... everything I was doing for our community, I was doing first and foremost for them. It was... their lives I wanted to protect from the... danger of being demonized and feared.”
We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: a Memoir of Love and Resistance by Linda Sarsour, Simon & Schuster, Rs 599 Amazon
As the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, Sarsour grew up as a part of two different worlds — her homeland, Palestine, and her home town, Brooklyn — both of which she embraced. With the help of her father’s cousin, Basemah, a social justice activist who ran the association, she learnt how to “raise holy hell” when oppressed communities — black, brown, Muslim — were in need. In the wake of Basemah’s passing, Sarsour joined the fight to create a ground zero mosque and became part of protests against the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies which mainly victimized people of colour. Along with her fellow activists, Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, she organized the Women’s March. They navigated “uncharted corners of... sisterhood” in order to “pitch a large and inclusive tent, one that would allow the whole beautiful rainbow of women in America to find their place in the march, too”.
In spite of these achievements, Sarsour witnessed her family facing “an avalanche of hate” as a result of her growing visibility. This is the lesson that lies at the heart of her book: that working to destroy societal inequities alongside trying to shield one’s family from the monstrosities of this world is the balance one must strike in order to be a citizen-activist. In her closing pages, Sarsour puts out a clear call to action: “I am calling on everyone who reads this book to join me in the struggle for a redeemed nation, one that will heal its divisions and affirm the sanctity and sovereignty of every life as it paves the way for a better world.”
