BGSQD
BGSQD
A love letter to liberation, from Palestine to the ground beneath your feet.
When you think of freedom, where are you? And where are you headed? Dreaming of freedom from within the occupied and displaced worlds of Palestine, Letters from a Living Utopia engages with utopia as both a destination and a potential present. Addressing past and future selves among other crucial figures, Mx. Yaffa builds epistolary bridges in these pages, connecting the historical struggle for liberation of the land and its people with the intimate ways that we can recover hope–now and in the years to come.
Emerging during a time of generational dispossession, monstrous genocide, and personal pain, Letters from a Living Utopia is a journey of resilient repair that will leave every reader with the deeply felt certainty that Palestine will be free, but also that Palestine has always been free.
Yaffa AS will be joined in conversation by Leah Kim and Rabab Abdulhadi
To reserve a copy of Letters from a Living Utopia: Reclaiming Liberation from Palestine to the World (Common Notions, October 7, 2025, paperback, $18) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Letters from a Living Utopia for December 4 event” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
You can also purchase Letters from a Living Utopia (click on title below) on our online shop at bookshop.com/shop/bgsqd:
Letters from a Living Utopia:
Reclaiming Liberation from Palestine to the World
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
WE ASK ALL ATTENDEES TO PLEASE WEAR MASKS.
FREE MASKS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE ENTRANCE TO OUR ROOM.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD
Even better: sign up to make a monthly tax-deductible donation to the Bureau!
Thank you for committing to sustaining this vital project!
Mx. Yaffa (they/she) is a disabled, autistic, trans, queer Muslim and indigenous Palestinian culture worker and organizer. The author of Blood Orange, Whispers Beneath the Orange Grove, and Desecrated Poppies, Yaffa is also editor of Inara: Light of Utopia and executive director of the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD).
Rabab Abdulhadi, founding Director/Senior scholar of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program at SFSU, is co-founding Editorial Board member of Islamophobia Studies Journal, lead editor of book volumes and author of over 80 articles and book chapters in seven languages. She received her PhD from Yale University (2000) and scholarly awards and community honors, including Sterling Fellowship, New Century Scholarship, best non-fiction book award, and American Association of University Professors, National Women’s Studies Association. She is compiling critical oral histories of Palestinian activism and editing an anthology on Teaching Palestine; and roundtables on Black Liberation; Abolition and Reparations; and Whose Narrative? Gender, Justice and Palestine.