A prestigious US literary magazine retracted an essay by an Israeli writer and translator about her experience in trying to find common ground with Palestinians following October 7 after backlash from the magazine’s staff members and others.
Guernica magazine stated after removing the essay over the weekend that it “regrets having published” the essay by Joanna Chen, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World,” without elaborating any further.
The Guernica page where Chen’s essay was posted currently reads, “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.”
This withdrawal followed the public resignation of multiple members of the magazine’s volunteer staff who were triggered by the essay.
Madhuri Sastry, a human-rights worker and researcher formerly of the American Red Cross, resigned as co-publisher on March 10, after describing the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine” and further urged the resignation of the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jina Ngarambe.