You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? I think we are at war! In the same poem, the speakers sister defies Islamic law by shaving her arms, and Asghar writes in response, Haram, I hissed, but too wanted to be bare / armed & smooth, skin gentle & worthy / of touch. That is, until the sisters body betrays her with an ingrown hair that lands her in the hospital. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Just my body & all its oil," she writes near the end of the poem, summing up her alienation from a body brutally marked by race and war. Just my body & all its oil, she writes near the end of the poem, summing up her alienation from a body brutally marked by race and war. Big and muscular, neck full of veins, bulging in the pen.Her eyes kajaled & wide, glued to sweaty american men. If They Come For Us , by Fatimah Asghar (One World/Penguin Random House, 2018). Threads of embodying courage in the face of danger are woven into the anthology, building on Asghars initial juxtaposition of death and resilience in For Peshawar'' and Gazebo. Asghar, who has a fierce reputation of wielding words packed with sharpness and intelligence, likewise challenges the conventional practices of writing poetry. to a pink useless pulp. One quick perusal through the shelves of world literature in any bookstore confirms just what the literary world wants to see from writers of color and writers from developing nations: trauma, she writes. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. youre kashmiri until they burn your home, she writes in the first Partition poem, delineating the ways bodies and identities are at the whim of the shifting logic of borders. "I have no blood. With this poem, readers are immersed in a personal account of the day-to-day experiences of Asghar as she searches for acceptance in America and routinely faces threats and insecurity. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier and Good Fossil Fuels, Two scholars exchange letters on poetry and climate. Partition is too innocent of a word to describe one of the largest refugee crises in South Asian history. from a poisonous one. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. Subsequent poems choreograph Asghars dynamic reconciliation and continued battles between her cultural identity, sexuality, and position in America. by pathmark. As though I told you how the first time. The expansion of the popular landscape of poetry, Love Letter to the Eve of the End of the World, Recycling Poetry in a Time of Climate Change. It seemed peaceful enougheach group would have their separate homes. These inheritances seep from country to country, body to body, and word to word, generating animosity and division. Later in the poem, Asghar directly addresses death, stating, in all our family histories, one wrong / turn & then, death. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. Coming out of the vibrant Chicago poetry scene where she made a name for herself as a slam poet, her writing is as informed by slams overt linking of the personal with the political, as it is by formal experimentation and lyricism (she cites Douglas Kearney and Terrance Hayes as influences). in the kitchen. But whenever its on you watchthem snarl like mad dogs in a cagethese american men. a little symphony, so round. His body is sent to Pakistan. Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. The two main characters are a queer Pakistani-American writer and an African-American musician and are played by Nabila Hossain and Sonia Denis respectively. Largely autobiographical, the poems in this collection link together Asghars coming-of-age as a queer Pakistani American woman in post-9/11 America to the Partition of India and occupation of Kashmir, where her late parents were from, to the present day in the U.S. under Trump. But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" "In. Back of the throatto teeth. In 2011 she created a spoken word poetry group in Bosnia and Herzegovina called REFLEKS while serving a Fulbright fellowship, where she studied theater in post-genocidal countries. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. In 2017, she was a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and listed on Forbess 30 under 30 list. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer, Poems of Muslim Faith and Islamic Culture, VS Live with Fatimah Asghar, Jos Olivarez, and Paul Tran. The towers fell two weeks, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them. in your family's house, you: runaway dog turned wild. black grass swaying in the field, glint of gold in her nose. the day other kids shovedmy body into dirt & christened mehe appeared, boy, wicked, feral, swallowing my stride.the boy who grows my beard& slaps my face when I wax, my mustache. As the poem progresses, Asghar becomes further distanced from the events, seeming to remember less and less. Copyright 2017 by Fatimah Asghar. Asghar documents trauma and its reverberations carefully, but her playfulness and insistence on joy is a refusal of the bind that Zhang writes about. His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. "I felt a palpable difference. Copyright 2010-2019, The Adroit Journal. A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. . Ive never been to my daddys grave.My ache: two jet fuels ruining the suns set play. Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former poet laureate of the United States. I am four, sitting in a patch of grass Every nonhuman living thing is held captive by our actions. , is one of being gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink. Main Na Bhoolunga. Freedom Bar Asnia Asim 71. Her parents immigrated to the United States. "[16], Brown Girls received an Emmy nomination in 2017 in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series category. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. How we master the forms we choose to write in and speak back to our own traditions is a personal choice, writes Momtaza Mehri in her critical defense of instagram poets like Rupi Kaur, who is often accused of commodifying trauma and her own marginalization as a brown woman. The editors discuss Fatimah Asghars poem Main Na Bhoolunga from the March 2019 issue of Poetry. The Woman in the White Chador Farnaz Fatemi 61. "When your people have gone through such historical violence, you cannot shake it. my country is made / in my peoples image / if they come for you they / come for me too, she writes. VS returns with a special bonus episode to tide you over until Season 3 drops in February. Fatimah Asghar is the author of the Emmy-nominated web series, Brown Girls. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. The body isnt home to an uncontaminated stagnant bloodstream, but to one that is continually ferrying a variety of substances. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. Poets in the diaspora have mined the relationship between the violent remapping of the subcontinent with the instability of South Asian identity, language, and citizenship in their work. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? The basic rules for writing a ghazal seem straightforward five to 15 couplets, one word repeated at the end of each stanza but transporting this seventh-century Arabian form into a 21st-century American lyric is no mean trick. gives readers lyrically beautiful but painfully true glimpses into a world we may not be familiar with and asks us to reckon with our place in itwhether thats a place of commiseration, understanding, or of recognizing our own hand in upholding power structures that thrive off racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. her knees fold on the rundown mattress, a prayer to WWEHer tasbeeh & TV: the only things she puts before her husband. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. Fatimah Asghar's poem, "If They Should Come for Us" is the title poem of the poet's debut full-length collection, If They Come for Us, published by One World/Random House in 2018. Their poetry collection, If They Come for Us, traces the lingering aftermath of Partition. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. Theres noplace to see them again. She writes of her heritage, All the people I could be are dangerous. The speaker, whose parents have passed away, learns of her heritage from her relatives, who are not-blood but could be, further muddying notions of home, or where she truly belongsoften, this results in the idea that she doesnt. Does it matter how? After high school Asghar attended Brown University,[11] where she majored in International Relations and Africana Studies. This data is anonymized, and will not be used for marketing purposes. what do I do with the boywho snuck his way insideme on my childhood playground? As a poet who has lived through layers of oppression and violenceof cultural hesitation and uncertaintyAsghar writes of the many communities she has found in America and the kindness and generosity buried in a nation plagued by marginalization. Where I . [7] "As an orphan, something I learned was that I could never take love for granted, so I would actively build it," she told HelloGiggles in 2018.[8]. 2017 Poetry Foundation When Rivka reached out to me to do a profile on Fatimah Asghar, I could not have been more excited to interview someone whose work has affected me so much personally. Her selfhood is foreclosed by 9/11 and the resulting culture of fear and xenophobia: the ship sinks, her blood clots. She motions readers like myself towards a more compassionate understanding of history which has been narrated by vagueness beyond a 300-word synopsis that tries to encapsulate an intricately layered pastand a realization that violence can live through generations. 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