Books: Scrapbook of the Stateless

Acclaimed photojournalist Susan Meiselas revisited Kurdistan. Here’s what she found.

Photo: Mark Murrmann

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, acclaimed photojournalist Susan Meiselas traveled to northern Iraq to document the uncovering of mass graves of Kurds gassed and shot by Saddam Hussein. Her visit inspired her to create Kurdistan, a 400-page visual journey through the often-neglected culture of the people spread across the mountains of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Packed, scrapbooklike, with old portraits, postcards, maps, and newspaper clippings, Kurdistan is an absorbing archive of the world’s largest stateless ethnic group. A collectors’ item, the book is now being reissued by the University of Chicago Press with a new 12-page postscript that updates the 1997 original. “The book went out of print right before the [Iraq] war, right when there was a renewed interest in the Kurds,” says Meiselas. “I’ve been trying to get it back in print for four or five years.” Meiselas returned to northern Iraq in April to distribute copies of the new edition. “I knew how the book was embraced by the exiled Kurdish community,” she says, “but had no idea how well known it was in northern Iraq. So many people had heard of it; some had even seen it.”


If you buy a book using a Bookshop link on this page, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate