Stubborn Dreams of Freedom: A Review of The Land is Holy by noam keim

FOR THE READER:

noam keim is the kind of writer whose recollections spiral into whirlpools of thought. A tree is not just a tree. Clouds are not just clouds. Something labeled an "invasive species" might provide hope for us all.

In their first essay collection, a winner of one of Radix Co-Op's writing prizes judged by Hanif Abdurraqib, keim contemplates mallard ducks, mint leaves, the bitter shiba, the sweet Sabra, and more features of the world around them to find an answer to what home might be. Raised in Mulhouse, France by an Arabic-Jewish family complicit in the settler-colonialism of occupied Palestine, keim searches in the leaves and roots of plants, the migrations of birds, and their memories for what might constitute home, ancestry, and freedom.

In the essay "Fruits of the Dessert," keim discusses the Sabra fruit of their youth, and Zionist pursuits that led to the destruction of Palestine. "418 Palestinian villages were destroyed to make way for the Zionist State. I almost typed each village name so that we could collectively remember them. I wanted to write their names, but I worried you wouldn't read them. I worried that you would think I did it as a performance and not as a prayer for their return." This book is replete with such prayers, earnest and sometimes as oblique as this refusal to name, but more often laid out in painstaking detail. They discuss working for prison abolition, and their need to connect back to the plants and herbs "to reclaim a lineage beyond my mother's ideals of whiteness. In the herbal traditions of Arab Jews, I believed I could find healing."

And healing does seem to come to them as they trace their lineage, the scars left by their birth family, their acts of reclamation, and their loves. keim describes themself as a "flaneur," a French word for one who walks a city. They walk the cities of the world and trace their connection to this word in the essay "To Walter." Here, they recount giving themself a stick-and-poke tattoo of the word, and the journeying towards freedom of Walter Benjamin, which ended in his suicide.

It's hard to discuss this book in terms of "what happens." What simply happens is that keim travels the world, looking for a sense of home, a sense of belonging, and an ancestral link to such things, while struggling for their own and the world's freedom - a lofty goal. But what is most fascinating about the book is the places keim's mind goes between these wanderings, in finding kinship, healing, and ancestry in the most unusual of places. I'd happily follow keim's meandering to any place, to any topic.

Towards the end of the book, in the last essay "Heavenly Tree," keim lays out their wishes for the "invasive species" of the Gingko Bilboa tree to free the city they have come to rest in, to break down prison walls, to re-wild the earth. "Stubborn dreamers will dance as the gates of solitude and desperation are progressively turned into dust by the natural forces they are trying to ignore." keim not only thinks towards a better world, they lay out exactly how we will get there.

FOR THE WRITER

noam keim is a writer to take note of now, while their first book is making the rounds. I first met them at an event at Big Blue Marble in Philly, where they live, and was immediately struck by the profundity of their thinking, as well as their careful observation of the world around them. Don't make it a tree when you can understand the history and the migration of the tree you're looking at, their words seem to insist. I can't think of a more deserving winner for one of Radix's contests.

And a word on Radix Co-op, while you're here. They're the only truly radical publishing house going, imho. They are a worker-owned-print-shop-turned-publisher. Yes, they make the books by hand. Yes, they make them beautiful. They are a mostly BIPOC-owned enterprise and publish some of the most exciting literature happening today (unsurprisingly, with their radical roots). Check them out!