70,000 - by Lenna Jawdat (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A powerful act of remembrance and resistance, 70,000 transforms cultural erasure into a living, breathing archive of grief, memory, and hope.

70,000 is a visceral and inventive collection of poetry rooted in the theft of 70,000 books from Palestinian homes and private libraries by Zionist forces before and during the Nakba of 1948. Of those books, most have vanished; just 6,000 remain, locked in the Israeli National Archives--unreachable by Palestinians.

In response to this loss of knowledge and memory, Lenna Jawdat began handwriting the numbers one to 70,000, willing herself to think of every number as a book. Trained as a trauma therapist, she documented the emotional and physical experience of this ritual, giving shape to the grief, rage, and reverence that emerged. This full color book unfolds in three interwoven threads: the numbers themselves, reflections on the writing process, and a personal and familial poetic narrative captured in both images and verse. Together, they form a fragmented but powerful archive--one that blends poetry, memoir, maps, documents, and collage.

70,000 is a deeply embodied meditation on cultural erasure and the resilience of memory. What begins as a personal act of reckoning becomes a collective gesture of hope, resistance, and the radical possibility of healing.

About the Author

Lenna Jawdat is a poet, writer, and psychotherapist of Palestinian and Iraqi descent. Her writing, which explores trauma, identity and resilience, has appeared in journals such as Poet Lore, The Margins, Passenger's Journal, Rogue Agent, among others, and in the 2025 Haymarket Anthology Heaven Looks Like Us. She was a 2021 Best of the Net nominee for her poem "Ode to the Psoas," a 2022 Sundress Academy for the Arts summer resident, and has attended Tin House Workshop for poetry and creative nonfiction. She is also co-organizer of the poetry vigil series In Water and Light. Lenna received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in May 2024. She lives in DC with her partner and two cats.