Announcing the Second Printing of “For the baby ancestors in Gaza”

A volume of poetry by Julia Wright

March 19, 2026

Watch this event on YouTube: Book Talk - For the baby ancestors in Gaza: A book of poetry by Julia Wright

This volume of poetry by Julia Wright titled For the baby ancestors in Gaza and other poems for Palestine has gone into a second printing!. As Julia Wright says in her Introduction “Then came October 7th and the genocidal months over two years of writing near daily poems for Palestine, as if I was keeping a journal and as if the least I could do was to give CPR at a distance.”

Julia Wright is the elder daughter of the late African American novelist, journalist and poet, Richard Wright. She is a descendant of the survivors of the 1919 Elaine Massacre through her lynched great uncle, Silas Hoskins. A Pan Africanist, she served under Kwame Nkrumah until the CIA-abetted coup d’etat in Ghana in 1966. She subsequently worked with James Forman in SNCC and went on to attend the first cultural Pan African Festival in Algiers alongside Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver of the Black Panther Party.

The Foreword to Ms. Wright’s book of poems is written by Yousef M. Aljamal, editor of If I Must Die and executor of the papers of Refaat Alareer, poet and teacher targeted and murdered by the Israeli Occupation Forces in Gaza.

This 68-page volume contains 29 poems and sells for $5.00 plus $3.00 for shipping per copy. It can be ordered via email to moratorium@moratorium-mi.org. CashApp payments can be made to $MoratoriumNow1 or checks can be sent to Moratorium Now Coalition, 5920 Second Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202.

Response to Julia Wright’s Volume of Poetry

“The poems of Julia Wright – their massive witnessing embrace filled with nothing but tender human care and crucial outrage – will remain my best gift of this sad holiday season. So much cruelty and injustice in our shared world – Wright’s poems remind us who we want to be and might have been. WOW! She’s a revelation!” – Naomi Shihab Nye, renowned Palestinian writer living in the U.S.

“I just looked at Julia Wright’s book. Her poetry is moving. She covers so much regarding the experiences in Gaza. And her poems evince an understanding of the broader as well as the particular situation. I thought it was a sensitively written collection that inspires a connection with the people of Gaza, an empathy that is welcome. I’m glad this collection is out in the world.” – Zeina Azzam, Palestinian poet, former poet laureate of Alexandria, Virginia

“Julia Wright once again makes an enormous cultural contribution to the struggle against imperialism in Palestine and around the world.” – Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor, Pan-African News Wire

“Almost got lost in my mail, a literary bomb of Resistance from the great Julia Wright! … Savor her ‘For the Baby Ancestors in Gaza! Thank u, Julia!” – Baba Zayid Muhammad, nationally acclaimed African American abolitionist poet and the chairman of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee

“I just read your book cover to cover and am awash in love, sorrow, despair, and hope. Thank you. I read some of your Palestine poems over the last few years as you sent them around, but the book itself is much more than the sum of its parts.” – Laura Whitehorn, Former political prisoner