We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices From Syria

FEATURING WENDY PEARLMAN – Syria and its unending war remain in the news after many long years of fighting, bloodshed, and displacement. Often the voices of ordinary Syrians, who bear the biggest brunt of violence, are left out of media narratives. My guest aims to rectify that in a new book that was years in the making.

Wendy Pearlman spent four years talking to Syrians wherever she could: in Jordan and Germany and everywhere in between. She spoke with doctors, students, former soldiers, accountants, TV news reporters, school-teachers, playwrights, stay-at-home mothers, shop keepers, and engineers.

Pearlman took her massive trove of interviews and turned them into a powerful book that gives collective voice to ordinary Syrians and personifies the targets of Bashar Al-Assad and the West’s war.

Wendy Pearlman, professor at Northwestern University, author of two earlier acclaimed books on Palestine called Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life From the Second Intifada; and Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement. Her newest book is called We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices From Syria.