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Resilience and Resistance: Queer Palestinian Narratives
Tickets
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Resilience and Resistance: Queer Palestinian Narratives will serve as a strategic platform for interrogating the structural entanglements of queerness and Palestinian liberation in the face of colonial violence. This symposium will not merely spotlight individual experiences but will foreground the collective resistance of queer Palestinians within the ongoing dynamics of colonization, genocide, and systemic oppression. It is an intellectual and cultural intervention that demands an interrogation of the intersectional forces of geopolitical power, settler colonialism, and the violent enforcement of normative identities.
By disrupting dominant narratives, the symposium will critically engage with the intersection of queerness, nationalism, and ethnic identity, drawing attention to the mechanisms that both shape and fracture Palestinian lives under conditions of perpetual dispossession and violence. It will examine how systems of coloniality, capitalism, and imperialism systematically enforce homogeneity and suppress diverse expressions of identity, and how queer Palestinians respond to and resist these forces in ways that challenge the hegemonic status quo.
The event will focus on the macro implications of decolonization, self-determination, and the comprehensive liberation project, positioning queer Palestinian narratives as an essential component of the struggle against the genocide that began over 100 years ago. By situating these discourses within an abolitionist framework, Resilience and Resistance will foster a critical dialogue on the transformative potential of queer Palestinian thought and its indispensable role in the abolition of oppressive systems and the creation of liberated futures.
Biographies
Layla Taurasi (She/They) is a Palestinian writer, human rights advocate, community organizer, spoken word artist, poet, and founder of a grassroots nonprofit organization. She uses poetry as a medium for advocacy on local and global human rights issues including anti-Palestinian racism and Indigenous sovereignty and liberation on Turtle Island. Layla explores themes of diaspora, exile, migration, decolonization, sexuality, mental illness, collective memory, revolution, and more. Some poets that have inspired her writing include Mahmoud Darwish, Suhier Hammad, Rafeef Ziadah, Ocean Vuong, Audre Lorde, and Maya Angelou. Her favourite books of poetry are Aja Monet’s My Mother is a Freedom Fighter and Warsan Shire’s Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head. Layal’s work is published in several magazines and zines in Canada and the US.
May E is a Palestinian lawyer based in Toronto. She has been involved in community initiatives for almost two decades and is one of the co-founders of Indigenous Land Defence Across Borders, a coalition of Palestinians and Indigenous women/2-spirit people from Turtle Island that organized a delegation to Palestine.
Amina Abdulhaq is an independent researcher and lawyer from Jerusalem, Palestine. She focuses on feminist and queer politics, particularly in relation to settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Her work challenges oppressive systems and aims to dismantle dominant narratives while addressing the structures that uphold exploitation.
Rayan Anton is a Palestinian Social Worker and Psychotherapist based in Toronto. He primarily works with queer and trans people of colour and bases his practice in dismantling and resisting systemic oppression and intergenerational trauma. He is the co-founder of Meem Toronto – a social group for queer and trans people from the Arabic-speaking region.
Tania is a Palestinian/Lebanese, queer Naturopathic Doctor and Relational Therapist. Exploring the relationship between our internal and external worlds, she’s particularly interested in community and liberation psychology and how that can be integrated into organizing and across social movements.
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