Tue, 29 May 2018, 18:30
Kurdish Community Centre, London (UK), Kurdish Community Centre, 1 Portland Gardens, Harringay, London, N4 1HU
London launch with Janet Biehl to mark the release of 'Sara: My Whole Life Was a Struggle'
**Please note the change of venue**
Join Pluto Press and Peace in Kurdistan Campaign for a special event at the Kurdish Community Centre in London, marking the release of Sara: My Whole Life Was a Struggle by Sakine Cansız, the iconic memoir by one of the first female fighters of the PKK, with the book’s translator Janet Biehl.
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The bitter struggle of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, against the Turkish state has delivered inspirational but often tragic stories. This memoir by Kurdish revolutionary Sakine Cansiz is one of them. Sakine, whose code name was ‘Sara’, co-founded the PKK in 1974 and dedicated her life to its cause. On the 9 January 2013 she was assassinated in Paris in circumstances that remain officially unresolved.
This is the first chapter of her iconic life, leading up to her arrest in 1979, penned as dramatic events unfolded against the backdrop of the Turkish revolutionary left. She writes about the excitement of entering the movement as a young woman, discovering she would have to challenge traditional gender roles as she rose amongst its ranks. She was one of the first to demand the recruitment and education of female revolutionaries, and demanded total gender equality within the PKK, which is now one of its central tenets.
Today, Sara is an inspiration to women fighting for liberation across the world. This is her story in her own words, and is in turns shocking, violent and path-breaking.
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Sakine Cansız was a Kurdish revolutionary, who was a leading member of the PKK, present at its first congress of 1978. She was imprisoned between 1980 and 1991 for her membership of the PKK. A close associate of Abdullah Ocalan and a senior member of the PKK, she was murdered in Paris in 2013.
Janel Biehl is a writer, editor and translator. She was Murray Bookchin’s copyeditor for the last two decades of his professional life. Her most recent work is Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin (2015, Oxford University Press) and she recently translated Revolution in Rojava (Pluto, 2016) and Sara (Pluto, 2018).
+ Chair (TBC)
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Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start.
Tickets are £2 each (plus fees) and proceeds will go towards the room hire costs
Copies of Sara will also be available to purchase on the night for £10 (RRP: £17.99).
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