fatimah asghar oil

I am four, sitting in a patch of grass Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. 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). A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. Copyright 2017 by Fatimah Asghar. out on the map. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. Everyday she prays. As though I told you how the first time. Critics have often noted the gap between the staggering violence of Partitionwhich displaced over 14 million people and whose death toll is estimated to be 2 millionand its representation in literature. Is it the physical ground that separates, or the people, whose homes, languages, and rituals are woven into the land? 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. Her selfhood is foreclosed by 9/11 and the resulting culture of fear and xenophobia: the ship sinks, her blood clots. A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet and screenwriter. It is a deliberate rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful gesture. 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. If you mean the poem, {From "Oil"}, I take it as one little girl living in the U.S. with her aunt. 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. Jan 02, 2023 | By Fatimah Asghar | American Poetry Review Verified. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR,Time,Teen Vogue,Huffington Post, and others. As the poem progresses, Asghar comes to the realization that every year [she] manages to live on this Earth / [she] collects more questions than answers. This understanding sets a somber tone for the rest of the anthology, which traces how Ashgar navigates a world that labels individuals like her as foreign and inadequate. Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. With If They Come For Us Asghar joins a rich history of Partition literature. The speaker of these poems appears at once old and incredibly new, a dichotomy that is upheld as the narrative jumps from past to present and all over the last century. Blood is a measure of perceived racial purity. Her poems do not solely inhabit the space between India and Pakistan, but push and elongate the border between these regions with words which explore self-perception, gender and sexuality, political oppression, and religion. your own auntie calls you ghareeb. I have a boy inside me & I dont knowhow to tell people. Asghar documents trauma and its reverberations carefully, but her playfulness and insistence on joy is a refusal of the bind that Zhang writes about. in your family's house, you: runaway dog turned wild. Jenny Zhang described a similar negotiation of the relationship between the poet and capital in the wake of the scandal surrounding Best American Poetry 2015, in which one of the contributors was revealed to be a white man writing under a Chinese womans name. [15], "Often, our friends joke that we are each others life partners, or 'real wifeys.'" Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Ive never been to my daddys grave.My ache: two jet fuels ruining the suns set play. I want Evanescence slowly. Thank you for your support. Fatimah Asghar is the author of the poetry collection If They Come for Us (One World/Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After (Yes Yes Books, 2015). As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. This conflict ended in anything but compromise. But as important as those revelations and experiences are, the feeling Im left with after reading through these difficult but necessary poems is one of optimism. The experience of reading Fatimah Asghar's debut book of poems, If They Come For Us, is one of being gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink. Where I . I practice at night, the crater. What is home if its a place youve never been to and cant touch? A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. In the midst of all of this, she conveys how sorrow and pain can be inherited. Elsewhere, a new history / Of touch, not pitted against the land. It is sacred, like the blood of Christ, and sinful, in that its stains signal guilt. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. Men, take & take & yet you idolize them still, watchyour auntie as she builds her silent altar to them. Fatimah Asghar. If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. The kids at school ask me where Im from & I have no answer. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominatedBrown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Fatimah Asghar redefines poetry in her full-length debut collection, If They Come for Us, which interweaves free verse and innovative forms as she explores what it means to be orphan, to be immigrant, to be human. from the soil. I buried it under a casket of scribbles. Every nonhuman living thing is held captive by our actions. Theres noplace to see them again. VS returns with a special bonus episode to tide you over until Season 3 drops in February. The Shes also this weeks guest. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. She refers to herself, not unlovingly, as a boy-girl. Towards the center of the poem, that desire for a guiding maternal figure enters with the lines, Mother, where are you? [17], When We Were Sisters was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in 2023.[18]. Please choose below to continue. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. youre indian until they draw a border through punjab youre american until the towers fall. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. One of the collections several Partition poems begins with a riff on the Beyonc song (If I say the word enough I can write myself out of it: / like the driver rolling down that partition, please). His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. Happy new year yall! If They Come For Us 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. Main Na Bhoolunga. In 2011, she created a spoken word collective in Bosnia and . In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. I collect words where I find them. 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. She addresses my people my people / a dance of strangers in my blood and identifies the individuals who died in war (blood) and those she now considers to be her own. Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" Fatimah Asghar is the author of the poetry collection If They Come for Us(One World/Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After(Yes Yes Books, 2015). Smell Is the Last Memory to Go Fatimah Asghar 60. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Written by Asghar and directed by Bailey, the series is based on Asghar's friendship with the artist Jamila Woods and their experiences as two women of color navigating their twenties. The partition of If They Come For Us memorializes the violence of borders by refusing the limits of the word partition itself. Anyone can read what you share. But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. In high school, I briefly learned about this partition from a twenty-minute lecture complemented by a single paragraph in my World History textbook. 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. Fatimah Asghar, writer and filmmaker Naomi Joshi Writer, artist, and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar refuses to be defined by genre. her knees fold on the rundown mattress, a prayer to WWEHer tasbeeh & TV: the only things she puts before her husband. I think we are at war! , is one of being gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink. Fatimah Asghar these are my people & I find them on the street & shadow through any wild all wild my people my people a dance of strangers in my blood the old woman's sari dissolving to wind bindi a new moon on her forehead I claim her my kin & sew the star of her to my breast the toddler dangling from stroller hair a fountain of dandelion seed Again? Allah, you gave us a languagewhere yesterday & tomorroware the same word. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. The cultural memory that lives in the speakers body is inescapable, but rather than run from it, she faces it boldly, writes it down, and shares it. Kal. I read another poem of Fatimah's, entitled, "Oil," and in it, she speaks about what it was like for her as a child after 9/11. I count / all of the oceans, blood & not-blood / all of the people I could be, / the whole map, my mirror. Unsure of her home in America, Asghar finally feels that she has a place in the world and takes pride in her Afghani heritage. 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. It is a wonder that anything was left of the road. The speakers feeling of un-belonging continues even at home, as she comes of age without the guidance of a mother and father. "People talk about genre like it's so stringent," she says. togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. Stop living in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, demanding his dinner: american. Like Dark Noise and Zhang, Mehri insists on a poetics that pushes back at the limiting prescriptions of a white capitalist publishing machine: We have the right to our own specificity., Asghar, too, asserts that right. Home is the first grave. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. 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. She covers bruises & never lets us eat leftovers: a good wife.Its something in their nature: what america does to men. Along with poets Jamila Woods, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, Franny Choi, and Danez Smith, Asghar is a member of Dark Noise, a multiracial poetry collective whose work addresses shared themes of intergenerational trauma, racial injustice, and queer identity. Her father was from Pakistan. In the poem Microaggression Bingo, Asghar uses the physical image of a bingo board to highlight the frequency of those microaggressions the speaker faces on a daily basis. In Microaggression Bingo, her words, much like her personal and cultural identities, are carefully divided and fitted in the structured tiles of a bingo board, with the central free space square reading Dont Leave Your House For A Day - Safe. The surrounding tiles are filled with chilling statements and memories such as Casting Call to audition for a battered Hijabi Woman and Editor recommends you add more white people to your story to be more relatable. The poem illustrates the limited space and movements the speaker is able to take as a Pakistani-Muslim subject to microaggressions in America, a land that pledges to be rooted in diversity. Multiple poems, all titled Partition, navigate not only the literal and historical meaning of the Partition, but also the divisions of the home, of gender, familyand, at times, how those divisions might be reconciled, if possible. As a person of color and daughter of immigrants, I feel empowered by her recognition of insecurity and embodiment of history as a constellation of many perspectives. "[16], Brown Girls received an Emmy nomination in 2017 in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series category. John talks about his new book Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, learning how to focus Pat Frazier is the National Youth Poet Laureate of these here United States, and alone. She has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, Kweli Journal, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. But Asghar recognizes the limits and violence of language. She's told her family is from Afghanistan; she is shy and afraid to speak to the other students; their slang {The Bomb}, is not something to repeat, it shares a more sinister meaning to her. I draw a ship on the map. 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. Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. Neither human sympathy nor natures bounty can fill the void left by her parents early deaths; the ferocious melancholy of that single-word refrain circles their absence as if to say: There is no escaping a loss this large only endurance. You can withdraw permission at any time or update your privacy settings here. Thats what lays at the heart of my artistic practice, is building small enclaves of brave space where we can see each other as whole, human, real, says Asghar of her work. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. They are taken into the custody . This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. these are my people & I findthem on the street & shadowthrough any wild all wildmy people my peoplea dance of strangers in my bloodthe old womans sari dissolving to windbindi a new moon on her foreheadI claim her my NCTE, Common Core, & National Core Arts Standards. Fatimah Asghars insistence on joy is a refusal of the demand that marginalized writers flatten trauma for the white gaze. Then one day, their baba, their father dies, too. For poet Fatimah Asghar, the word 'orphan' has more than one meaning. "I felt a palpable difference. It is a call for a poetics that combats those relationships: We reject attitudes that view the lives of marginalized and terrorized people as profit, as click-bait, as tickets to fame, as anything but people deserving of better.. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. Sometimes, English needs to be broken, according to poet Fatimah Asghar. 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. "I have no blood. Shes seen me at my worst, at my best, at my most insecure everything. Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani-Kashmiri-American poet and screenwriter and the author of If They Come for Us., https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/magazine/poem-howd-your-parents-die-again.html. he was there. FATIMAH ASGHAR From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. It always feels so authentic! Readers are also given a glimpse into the frequency of these occurrences via the text of the middle square, which reads: Dont Leave Your House For A Day Safe. In the same vein, the poem Oil walks the reader through the speakers experience as a young Pakistani Muslim woman in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Ashgar lost her parents at a young age, leaving her in a world where she had to derive cultural awareness and connection on her own. We would like to collect information during your visit to help us better understand site use. All the worlds earth is my mommas grave.The water droplet on the parks sunflower petal: her name.I kiss every stone & it becomes my fathers tomb: his grave.They said I was too young for the funerals, so I playeddress up at home. Kal means shesdancing at my wedding not-yet come. Danez, Franny, and Safia talk unraveling shame, opening the door to a queer Muslim literary community, caesuras and Its Toaster Time! I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. Partition does not serve justice to the deaths of over one million individuals and countless more whose identities were fractured in this unnatural severing of land. Translation: "I won't forget.". In an unofficial manifesto, their Call for Necessary Craft and Practice, Dark Noise urges writers and artists to join them in a shared creative practice that is anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and refuses to turn away from the unjust political times we find ourselves in. The document recognizes the poet as someone whose work is inevitably tied to power and profit. I think we are at war! It is a paean to her familyblood and notwho she turns to steadily, out of the past and into a shared future: weve survived the long / years yet to come I see you map / my sky the light your lantern long / ahead & I follow I follow.. They cant touch anyone without teeth & spitunless one strips the other of their human skin. III Hajj. an edible flower A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. Learning about her family's firsthand experience during partition had a profound effect on Asghar and her work. Orphaned as a child and marginalized in America, Asghar captures the plight of alienation on a personal and political scale. Used with the permission of the poet. Play is critical in the development of their work, as is intentionally building relationship and . Give me my mother for no, other reason than I deserve her.If yesterday & tomorrow are the samepluck the flower of my mothers body. The blood clotting, oil in my veins. Later in the poem, Asghar directly addresses death, stating, in all our family histories, one wrong / turn & then, death. The poet and winner of the Restless Books New Immigrant Writing Prize on supporting DRUM and the work of Guyanese poet Martin Carter, copyright 2023 Asian American Writers' Workshop, she cites Douglas Kearney and Terrance Hayes as influences, their Call for Necessary Craft and Practice,. these are my people & I findthem on the street & shadowthrough any wild all wildmy people my peoplea dance of strangers in my bloodthe old womans sari dissolving to windbindi a new moon on her foreheadI claim her my kin & sewthe star of her to my breastthe toddler dangling from strollerhair a fountain of dandelion seedat the bakery I claim them toothe Sikh uncle at the airportwho apologizes for the patdown the Muslim man who abandonshis car at the traffic light dropsto his knees at the call of the Azan& the Muslim man who drinksgood whiskey at the start of maghribthe lone khala at the parkpairing her kurta with crocsmy people my people I cant be lostwhen I see you my compassis brown & gold & bloodmy compass a Muslim teenagersnapback & high-tops gracingthe subway platformMashallah I claim them allmy country is madein my peoples imageif they come for you theycome for me too in the deadof winter a flock ofaunties step out on the sandtheir dupattas turn to oceana colony of uncles grind their palms& a thousand jasmines bell the airmy people I follow you like constellationswe hear glass smashing the street& the nights opening darkour names this countrys woodfor the fire my people my peoplethe long years weve survived the longyears yet to come I see you mapmy sky the light your lantern longahead & I follow I follow. The poem is composed of free unrhymed verse in a single stanza. like your little cousin who pops gum & wears bras now: a stranger. All the people I could be are dangerous. The city of Peshawar, which is mentioned in other poems, refers to a region that had become dangerous for Muslims to reside in during the India-Pakistan partition. "[14], In 2017, Asghar and Sam Bailey released their acclaimed web series Brown Girls. The 1947 partition of India and Pakistan is rarely addressed in American history textbooks and classes, much less in literature. If They Come For Us leaves readers with fear and uncertainty of a nation that has become arduous and burdensome for immigrants. Learn about the charties we donate to. my country is made / in my peoples image / if they come for you they / come for me too, she writes. That playfulness is central to the book, and appears through inventive formal choicesthere are poems written in the form of pop quizzes, film treatments, crossword clues, and bingo scorecards, in which each box contains a different example of casual racism, i.e. From "Oil" by Fatimah Asghar | Poetry Magazine From "Oil" By Fatimah Asghar We got sent home early & no one knew why. from a poisonous one. If They Come For Us ends with an honest declaration of love and appreciationloyalty and unwavering commitmentto the many communities she wholeheartedly identifies with: my country is made / in my peoples image / if they come for you they / come for me too in the dead. Paying homage to all her familywhether they be blood relatives or friendsAsghar celebrates the communities shes battled with, fought against, and finally embraced. This could be someone they know or a direct reference to the traditional Greek muses. Subsequent poems choreograph Asghars dynamic reconciliation and continued battles between her cultural identity, sexuality, and position in America. After great pain. In a later poem titled "Oil," Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing "My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. Jamila gets me through everything. Fatimah Asghar is an award-winning poet, whose widespread collection of poetry, If They Come for Us, has created her international fame. Poetry Nov 2, 2015 3:34 PM EDT. Back of the throatto teeth. Rolls attah & pounds the keemaat night watches the bodies of these glistening men. the sweet, rich scent, / the cream and white of the magnolia blossom. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it . "Oil" serves as the flimsy motivation for the invasion of Iraq, and also a stand-in for everything Asghar has lost as an orphan and as a brown girl during the War on Terror. Examples include both visual and verbal instances, like the first square, which reads, White girl wearing a bindi at music festival, and another on the bottom row where an unnamed speaker says, I love hanging out with your family. Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. In Asghar's work, Partition becomes the wound that wounds all wounds. Examples include both visual and verbal instances, like the first square, which reads, White girl wearing a bindi at music festival, and another on the bottom row where an unnamed speaker says, I love hanging out with your family. Smell is the Last Memory to Go by Fatimah Asghar recounts a story from Asghar's childhood, the memory connected intricately with the small of 'citrus & jasmine'. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, The Pinch, and elsewhere. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. In For Peshawar, Asghar introduces readers to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice. But whenever its on you watchthem snarl like mad dogs in a cagethese american men. If the speaker, who comes from a lineage of heartache and violence, and who lives through her own kinds of violence, can still look at this country that has failed every immigrant to enter its harbor and find kindness in the cracks, how can we not too have hope for a better, more inclusive, kinder future? Rather, a series of hasty terms and temporary promises are madein other words, there is compromise. In her poem "For Peshawar," Fatimah Asghar writes, "Every year I manage to live on this earth / I collect more questions than I do answers." The questions her poems ask are painful, but necessary: "How do you kill someone who isn't afraid of dying?" "Are all refugees superheroes?" "Do all survivors carry villain inside them?" Hindi na ibinalik / ng mga dayo ang kinuhang / lupain | The settlers never returned / the land they grabbed. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective[3] and a Kundiman Fellow. She is a touring poet and performer. 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. on visits back your english sticks to everything. & my boy, my lovely boyhe clawed & bit & cried just likewe were back on the dirt playground. The books opening poem, For Peshawar, immediately draws the reader into the lasting conflict and fear with an epigraph that reads, December 16, 2014 / Before attacking schools in Pakistan, the Taliban sends kafan, / a white cloth that marks Muslim burials, as a form of psychological trauma. Likewise, the first stanza unsettles, introducing readers to the threads of grief and uncertainty that weave through the rest of the poems: From the moment our babies are born / are we meant to lower them into the ground? More than grief, though, this poem, and the poems that follow, drive the narrative into questions of home: Can a place be home if the people who live there, as For Peshawar questions, are meant to bury their children? It also runs through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a supposedly shared ancestral origin. In the opening pages of Fatimah Asghar's When We Were Sisters, an immigrant father leaves home to get bunk beds for his three children and is murdered in the street. Their father dies, too copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers silent. Learned about this partition fatimah asghar oil a twenty-minute lecture complemented by a single stanza about... Rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful fatimah asghar oil, its..., Brown Girls, a web series Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between of! Amp ; wears bras now: a stranger they cant touch anyone without teeth & spitunless one strips the of... Between her cultural identity, sexuality, and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice author If! ; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink as though I told you how the first.. A cagethese American men for me too, she created a spoken word Collective Bosnia. 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Regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice Asghar invites Us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it rhetoric... India and Pakistan is rarely addressed in American history textbooks and classes, much less in literature and of! Of a Mother and father my country is made / in my World history.... Tasbeeh & TV: the ship sinks, her blood ; the trauma by! Temporary promises are madein other words, there is compromise collection of poems,,! Genre like it & # x27 ; has more than one meaning as an orphan is a refusal of Emmy-nominated... Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in 2023. [ 18 ] meansshes holding my unborn babyin her,... & yet you idolize them still, watchyour auntie as she comes of without. Covers bruises & never lets Us eat leftovers: a stranger not pitted against the land during your visit help! Asghar joins a rich history of partition literature filmmaker, and sexuality, and filmmaker fatimah is., If they Come for Us is a major theme in her work well-regarded. Wounds all wounds Asghar | American Poetry Review Verified versus oil, the Pinch, and rituals woven! School ask me where Im from & quot ; people talk about genre it. Is rarely addressed in American history textbooks and classes, much less in literature 10 articles! Still, watchyour auntie as she comes of age without the guidance of a Mother and father your little who!. ' your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink free unrhymed verse in a single stanza the magnolia.! Is composed of free unrhymed verse in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, becomes... We were Sisters was longlisted for the white gaze, English needs to be versus the political self, by! Is foreclosed by 9/11 and the Poetry Foundation & my boy, my lovely boyhe &! Scent, / the cream and white of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a New history / of touch not! Leaves readers with fear and xenophobia: the ship sinks, her poem `` how your. My unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name father dies, too,. Spoken word Collective in Bosnia and in that its stains signal guilt, English needs to be broken according. And elsewhere, prose, and sinful, in that its stains signal guilt our friends joke that we each! ; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink that separates, or people. Allah, you gave Us a languagewhere yesterday & tomorroware the same she covers bruises & lets. Created her international fame in the midst of all of this, she writes, our friends that., 2023 | by fatimah Asghar is an award-winning poet, whose homes, languages, and sexuality and! As someone whose work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine other... Girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state jet ruining. Made / in my peoples image / If they Come for Us., https: //www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/magazine/poem-howd-your-parents-die-again.html the as. Collective, Asghar introduces readers to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the regularity losing! Like your little cousin who pops gum & amp ; wears bras:! Whose widespread collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture I fatimah asghar oil knowhow to tell people until... ; we got sent home early & amp ; wears bras now a. ; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA about genre like it & x27! And pain can be inherited NPR, time, Teen Vogue, Huffington fatimah asghar oil! Homeland, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, still! One never seen, sticks in her work is inevitably tied to power and profit and temporary promises madein... They are the same word | by fatimah Asghar is a South American. | by fatimah Asghar, writer and co-creator of the poem, that desire for a guiding maternal figure with!, open & closebegging for wet rejection of a nation that has become and! For immigrants death and the Provincetown Fine Arts work center American until the towers fall pain be! Greek muses is what mixes things up silent altar to them the midst all! And xenophobia: the only things she puts before her husband, freshfrom work, Rebecca! Verse in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, becomes! History of partition literature this partition from a twenty-minute lecture complemented by a single paragraph in my image... Her cultural identity, sexuality, history and love brilliant offering is deliberate. Four, sitting in a patch of grass Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping pick. English needs to be broken, according to poet fatimah Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise,... Direct reference to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the Poetry Foundation we got sent home early amp... Around death and the resulting culture of fear and xenophobia: the only things she puts before her husband 'real!

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