25. Queer, Palestinian and Decolonial: Featuring Tareq Baconi

Tareq Baconi’s memoir, *Fire in Every Direction*, reframes the familiar intersection of queerness and Palestinian resistance as a single, inseparable experience. By tracing his own coming‑of‑age in Jordan and his family’s displacement, Baconi shows how personal desire and collective trauma can coexist without compartmentalising identity. The narrative moves beyond academic discourse, offering a lived‑in perspective that illustrates why integrating queer and nationalist struggles matters for any activist seeking holistic liberation.

The book arrives amid intensified pink‑washing campaigns that portray LGBTQ rights as exclusive to the West while denying queer Palestinians any legitimacy. Baconi exposes how both Western media and regional actors cast queer identities as foreign or impossible, turning sexuality into a political weapon. His memoir pushes back against these narratives, insisting that queer Palestinian lives are integral to the broader fight for self‑determination, and that erasing them only strengthens imperialist agendas.

Structurally, the memoir began as a letter to Baconi’s first love, Ramzi, and the epistolary form remains the backbone of the story. This intimate device allows him to reconstruct memory, honor emotional truth, and critique the Western model of the “coming‑out” moment, which often feels alien in Middle‑Eastern contexts. By blending personal confession with historical reflection, the work invites readers to reconsider how memoir can serve as both testimony and resistance, making it a timely resource for scholars, activists, and anyone interested in decolonial queer politics.