Colors of Resilience - Voices of Palestinian Children (1987-1993)

Preserved for more than thirty-five years, these drawings remain a living testimony to Palestinian childhood, memory, and resistance.

• Writers: Issam Alyamani and Jude Barakat
• Hardcover
• 118 pages
• Size: 21 x 21 cm / 8.3 x 8.3 in
• Drawings created during the First Intifada, 1987 to 1993
• Palestinian children’s artwork reproduced as a historical archive

Colors of Resilience preserves drawings created by Palestinian children during the First Intifada, from 1987 to 1993. Through their own images, the children recorded how they understood the uprising around them, including their fears, hopes, dreams, and daily realities.

Several months after the uprising began, Palestinian refugee and writer Issam Alyamani recruited Canadian photographer Roberto to travel to Palestine and produce a documentary about the children participating. Roberto also visited schools and refugee camps, inviting children to draw their impressions of the Intifada. He returned with hundreds of drawings offering rare visual testimony from children living through that defining period.

The original drawings were exhibited at events connected to the Intifada and during Palestinian national commemorations. They were later safeguarded without alteration, protecting the integrity of the children’s voices. More than thirty-five years later, Palestinian-American writer Jude Barakat insisted that the collection was too important to remain hidden in boxes. That conviction became the foundation of this book.

Efforts were made to locate the people who had created the drawings as children. Some had been killed, while others had spent years imprisoned. Further contact was discontinued because of ongoing security concerns and the need to protect their safety and privacy.

Issam Alyamani’s parents were uprooted from the Palestinian village of Sumata in 1948. Jude Barakat’s parents were uprooted from Silwan and Anabta in 1967. Together, they have carried this collection into print as a record of Palestinian childhood, memory, resistance, and survival.

These drawings are more than works of art. They are living testimony created by Palestinian children in their own visual language, preserving a history that must not be erased or forgotten.