Voices of the Arab Spring

Narrated by dozens of activists and everyday individuals, this book documents the unprecedented events that led to the collapse of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Beginning in 2011, these stories offer unique access to the message that inspired citizens to act, their experiences during revolt, and the lessons they learned from some of the most dramatic changes and appalling events to occur in the history of the Arab world. The riveting, revealing, and sometimes heartbreaking stories in this volume also include voices from Syria.

Featuring participants from a variety of social and educational backgrounds and political commitments, these personal stories of action represent the Arab Spring's united and broad social movements, collective identities, and youthful character. For years, the volume's participants lived under regimes that brutally suppressed free expression and protest. Their testimony speaks to the multifaceted emotional, psychological, and cultural factors that motivated citizens to join together to struggle against their oppressors.

Asaad Alsalehis assistant professor of Arabic, comparative literature, and cultural studies in the Department of Languages and Literature and the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. His research focuses on issues related to autobiography and displacement in Arabic literature and political culture in the Arab world.

Peter Sluglett is director of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore.

...Humane and sensitive storytelling...

Valuable... Exhilarating to read...

Through the accumulation of personal stories, the reader begins to experience the larger narratives of the Arab Spring.

Al-Saleh brings together personal stories from the democratic uprisings.... The cumulative effect of the pieces is to insist that leaders, in the Middle East and outside of it, must listen to and heed the voices of the Arab Spring before lasting positive change can take place.

Roger Allen, professor emeritus, University of Pennsylvania:
This collection is of enormous importance. The speakers in these narratives are not specialist scholars but participants in the process of change and, all too often, victims of the regimes in the countries and regions covered. Their accounts provide the reader with vivid images of events that may have already been 'covered' by the world's media but have not, thus far at least, emerged with the kind of crystalline reality and sheer variety that is to be found within the covers of this book.

Mona El-Gobashy, Baheyya, of blogblogblog.com:
There's a wonderful, cumulative power to reading these personal narratives. They are gripping, extremely poignant, often heartbreaking, and astonishing. It is long overdue to finally have unmediated access to 'regular' citizens' experiences and recollections.