So we decided to travel
By: layout, Avery Bazemore ; book design&binding, Kevin Sheby, Lauren Schott ; editor, Lissy Romanow
Contributors: Sheby, Kevin, book designer, binder; Schott, Lauren, book designer, binder; Romanow, Lissy, editor; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: [Lynn, MA]
Language: ara
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Books in art; Refugees; Loss (Psychology) in art; Collective memory in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"'In So we decided to travel, ' al-Mutanabbi Street is a workplace, a heritage site, a hub of white-collar ambitions, and the occasion for an afternoon stroll. Beyond al-Mutanabbi Street is a landscape of ample houses and date palms; swarming militias and indiscriminate threats; fish, rice, kebab, and mothers too used to waiting. 'So we decided to travel' is a book written by Iraqi refugees living in the United States who wished to memorialise the losses, trials, and unlikely triumph of surviving in Iraq since 2003. The writers, who elected to remain anonymous in order to protect family members still living in their home country, shared poems, reflections, stories, family photographs, aphorisms, quotes from popular songs, favourite recipes, and prayers in the atonal cries of collective mourning. As one writer put it, we are taught to 'keep the sadness in our chests, but we have to take it out.' Activists in the U.S. also kept a sadness in their chests over the past ten years, watching their country go to war despite their protests, hearing of the militias that subsequently poured into Iraq, and with them, the countless lives caught in the crossfire. What have we done, here in the U.S., with this sadness? Have we taken it out of our chests? This book is testament not only to what was lost in this war, but also to the writers' courage to grieve. May they give us the courage to grieve with them, and confront the losses we tried, but failed, to avert"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Book artists Avery Bazemore, Lauren Schott, and Kevin Sheby designed and bound the books in homage to their school - the North Bennet St. School - whose founding mission was to provide immigrants with the skills needed for gainful employment in their new home. Many of the writers who contributed to this volume continue to seek gainful employment here in the U.S. It is not too late for us to fight alongside them, this time for the affordable housing and education necessary to survive in a broken economy"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.
Notes: Medium: Iris bookcloth with carbon title; Mohawk superfine paper; endpapers from blue examination books.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.

In Arabic, with English translation on opposite pages.