Fire in Every Direction

In Fire in Every Direction, we not only see how the oppression of a people has affected one Palestinian family, but how oppression in all forms - colonialism, patriarchy, homophobia, to name a few - creates dishonesty and masks within all of us. Tareq Baconi offers us a love letter, a blueprint on how to craft a life that questions the present, dreaming a better future in the process. By reading this beautifully honest memoir, we can learn to shed what must be shed in order to regain an allegiance toward justice, toward freedom, toward a liberation for all. Baconi has shown me that revolutions begin in the self; I am forever changed after reading this bookIn this moving and generous memoir, Tareq Baconi refuses to separate the story of sexual identity from the story of political commitment, and in so doing models a way to see our personal struggles as intertwined with our collective ones. Fire in Every Direction is a beautiful account of one man’s confrontation with the histories, silences, and desires - both communal and private - that have made him who he is.In a time when it can feel like language has been stripped of meaning and words have lost all power, Fire in Every Direction arrives as an affirmation and a refusal of silence. Luminous, moving, and achingly beautiful, every page of this book is guided by Tareq Baconi’s fierce intelligence and a tenderness that this world does not deserve. You do not read this book to repair your heart, you read this book to understand the fissures – Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow KingA powerful memoir of queer and Palestinian reckoning. Tareq Baconi creates “a gaze of our own” by bringing his open heart to a tough confrontation with histories both intimate and diasporic. An important contribution to our many literatures. – Sarah Schulman, author of The Fantasy and Necessity of SolidarityWith passion, sincerity, and wit, Baconi writes about the world he grew up in, about a time and place long gone, revivified in these beautiful pages. Spending time with the real people in Fire in Every Direction is a delight. Read this book! – Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary WomanWith eloquence, passion, and insight, Tareq Baconi weaves his personal story as a queer kid growing up in the refugee community in Jordan, into the larger narrative of his family’s dislocation, and the Palestinian struggle. In so doing, he gives new meaning to the concept of liberation, personal and political. Fire in Every Direction is a primarily a love story: about how one learns to overcome loss - of a homeland, of a beloved - due to the interventions of authorities, be they parents or conquerors. It is a deeply inspiring and absorbing read, especially in these times. – Mark Gevisser, author of The Pink LineI love this book. It is beautifully woven and registers acutely at the intimate and global levels of life – Judith Butler, author of Who’s Afraid of GenderIt is difficult to read Tareq Baconi’s intimate, mesmerizing meditation on dispossession and not think about how much safer it would have been to not write a book like this, to leave a dangerous past undisturbed. In stunning detail - both physical and emotional - Baconi traces a story of personal and communal alienation, longing, and liberation. Drawn here in beautiful, crushing clarity is an account of what systems of degradation, fear and theft can do to a person, a society, a world. That Baconi has managed to do all this in a memoir that still feels so firmly rooted in love is a marvel. – Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against ThisOutstanding … I found the blend between the personal and political to be very cleverly achieved. A brilliant book. – Raja Shehadeh, author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and IAt its heart, this is a love story spanning more than seventy years. Shot through with grief and longing, it is also a painstaking excavation of the past and a hopeful vision of a future, free from the narratives imposed upon them by others – Carys Davies, author of ClearBaconi has achieved the rarest of feats by using the queer Arab lens to tell the story of migration, displacement, colonialism and Western imperialism. And only through this alternative eye is a dissection of our privileges, flaws and sacrifices truly possible – Santanu Bhattacharya, author of DeviantsBrave, intimate, atmospheric and fierce, Fire in Every Direction reads like the best coming-of-age novels. This memoir about silence, passion and oppression traces the dual awakenings of love and politics. It is entrancing, galvanizing and deeply moving – Seán Hewitt, author of Open, Heaven

Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. His work has appeared in, among others, The New York Times and The Baffler, and he contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has also written for film; his award-winning BFI short One Like Him, a queer love story set in Jordan, screened in over thirty festivals. He is the author of Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, which was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award, and Fire in Every Direction.