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. I know you can bend time.I am merely asking for whatis mine. The forced migration of over 14 million peopleof Muslims to Pakistan and Hindus to Indiatore both families and land apart. 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. Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet and screenwriter. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. Kal means shesdancing at my wedding not-yet come. The partition of If They Come For Us memorializes the violence of borders by refusing the limits of the word partition itself. 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. her knees fold on the rundown mattress, a prayer to WWEHer tasbeeh & TV: the only things she puts before her husband. Recent poems about pregnancy, birth, and being a mother. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. crawling away from her, my fatherback from work. Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. Elsewhere, a new history / Of touch, not pitted against the land. 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. just in case, I hear her say. Like many territorial disputes, the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, an ethnically diverse Himalayan region known for its natural beauty, was rooted in religion. She covers bruises & never lets us eat leftovers: a good wife.Its something in their nature: what america does to men. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? 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. You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? 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. opens with the lines: Again? Partition, the 1947 cleaving of British-ruled India into three separate countries, India, Pakistan, and now-Bangladesh, serves as the central trauma of the collection. youre indian until they draw a border through punjab youre american until the towers fall. Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. 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. Sign up for the Asian American Writers' Workshop Newsletter: Asian American Writers Workshop Let's ask Fatimah Asghar, the author of the. Hindi na ibinalik / ng mga dayo ang kinuhang / lupain | The settlers never returned / the land they grabbed. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. Raye was a finalist for the 2018 Keene Prize for Literature and received honorable mentions for poetry from both Southern Humanities Reviews Witness Poetry Prize (2014) and AWPs Intro Journals Project (2015). Asghar chooses to conclude this intricate choreography with the titular poem If They Come For Us. In this piece, Asghars lyrical prose intensifies as she leaves readers with tangible revelations about the simultaneous pain and joy of having ones being so intimately tied to a land. Selected by Rita Dove. a little symphony, so round. 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. 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. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. 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. "I felt a palpable difference. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. 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. A poet, a fiction writer, and a filmmaker, Fatimah cares less about genre and instead prioritizes the story that needs to be told and finds the best vehicle to tell it. Give me my mother for no, other reason than I deserve her.If yesterday & tomorrow are the samepluck the flower of my mothers body. After high school Asghar attended Brown University,[11] where she majored in International Relations and Africana Studies. I collect words where I find them. 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. You can withdraw permission at any time or update your privacy settings here. But we loved our story: the gazebo / that dared to live on concrete. With Gazebo, Asghar begins to bridge the common occurrence of death with the power and fortified resilience that come with surviving in spaces where oppression is commonplace. Fatimah Asghar is the author of the full-length collection If They Come For Us (Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After (YesYes Books, 2015). In a later poem titled "Oil," Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing "My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. on visits back your english sticks to everything. , is one of being gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink. Asghars approach is similarly multimodal. 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. We work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. Danez, Franny, and Safia talk unraveling shame, opening the door to a queer Muslim literary community, caesuras and Its Toaster Time! "When your people have gone through such historical violence, you cannot shake it. an aunt teaches me how to tell 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. like your little cousin who pops gum & wears bras now: a stranger. It first appeared in Poetry Magazine in 2017. 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.. It is through you visiting Poem Analysis that we are able to contribute to charity. / A man? And again, in The Last Summer of Innocence, questions of the role of the body, and of gender norms, resurface. [9] Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier and Good Fossil Fuels, Two scholars exchange letters on poetry and climate. The death impacts a trio of siblings at the . Smell is the Last Memory to Go togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. Main Na Bhoolunga. Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. Allah, you gave us a languagewhere yesterday & tomorroware the same word. Asghar has a strong reputation for challenging norms, and for intelligent, sharp writing. Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former poet laureate of the United States. These inheritances seep from country to country, body to body, and word to word, generating animosity and division. With uniquely crafted poems which take the form of floor plans, bingo boards, and crossword puzzles, she shows her audience what it feels like to be constantly told that you dont belongwhat it means to feel threatened, yet confidentin a world torn apart by marginalization. Every nonhuman living thing is held captive by our actions. 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. 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. Rehman offers a new kind of fairy tale, surreal yet rooted in harsh, ugly modern realities. FATIMAH ASGHAR From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. 112 W 27th Street, Suite 600 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. An East Asian nematode is threatening the European eel population, Poems, correspondence, essays, and reportage on how we perceive and write about climate change, How we perceive and write about climate change, Katrina Bellos exquisite drawings of the vast and the miniscule in nature, Climate change and development threaten the indigenous fisherfolk communities of Mumbai. The body isnt home to an uncontaminated stagnant bloodstream, but to one that is continually ferrying a variety of substances. [17], When We Were Sisters was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in 2023.[18]. Amid the hurt and darkness that exists in this world, Asghars poems prove that hope is out there, if only we have the courage to look for it. She is a touring poet and performer. 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. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. Even now, you dont get it. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective[3] and a Kundiman Fellow. again, his legs slammingconcrete, my chest heavingwhen we ran from cops, the night they busted the river partyagain when I smashed the jellyfishinto the sand & grinded it down. His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. Fatimah Asghars insistence on joy is a refusal of the demand that marginalized writers flatten trauma for the white gaze. your own auntie calls you ghareeb. Our Mothers Fed Us Well Yasmin Belkhyr 70. 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. The speaker's feelings of belonging until threatened in India-Pakistan and un-belonging until invited in America penetrate the anthology, imbuing each poem with a degree of duality and division. 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. 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. It is a wonder that anything was left of the road. I practice at night, the crater. However, she then describes how Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship / out on the map. Danez and Franny hop on the ole zoom zoom with legendary poet and beard icon John Murillo. She is the author of the full-length collection If They Come For Us (One World/ Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After (YesYes Books, 2015). She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. he was there toothe day on Bens couch, wearingmy skirt, ranking the girls, in class. I whisper it to my sheets. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Big and muscular, neck full of veins, bulging in the pen.Her eyes kajaled & wide, glued to sweaty american men. Her father was from Pakistan. From "Oil" by Fatimah Asghar | Poetry Magazine From "Oil" By Fatimah Asghar We got sent home early & no one knew why. 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. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. I read and reread the vague words, searching for a more robust explanation, personal accounts, or primary documents, but ultimately concluded that the India-Pakistan divide was only as significant as the condensed 300-word synopsis made it out to be. 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. But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. Her parents immigrated to the United States. Originally published in Poetry (March, 2017). We would like to collect information during your visit to help us better understand site use. "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. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038, my people I follow you like constellations. Learn about the charties we donate to. Asghar continues to elaborate on this community, writing my people my people I cant be lost / when I see you my compass is brown & gold & blood / my compass a Muslim teenager / snapback & hightops gracing the subway platform, further stressing how she is able to lean on those who have sacrificed for herthose who have been and continue to be there for her. Kalmeans I wake to her strange voice. All rights reserved. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. The experience of reading Fatimah Asghars 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. 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. The text, formed from the scraps of a burned notebook chronicling a circuitous reverse diaspora, is deliberately fragmented and refuses easy interpretation. like whenthat man held me down & we said no. what do I do with the boywho snuck his way insideme on my childhood playground? The towers fell two weeks, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them. Sometimes, English needs to be broken, according to poet Fatimah Asghar. In For Peshawar, Asghar introduces readers to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice. The novel follows the coming of age of three sisters who are orphaned following the sudden murder of their father. 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. Simply and profoundly, her book is a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving." But with this understanding, Asghars compact yet clear prose also reminds audiences that, although pain exists in our world, we must reckon with our role in creating a more just community. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. 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. 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. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. from a poisonous one. Kal means Im in the crib. | Only the air was heavy and moist, like the breath of an enormous, mysterious beast. Freedom Bar Asnia Asim 71. In each of the books seven Partition poems, Asghar traces its legacy, but she also considers the metaphorical and physical partitions of her life. Zhang pointed to the lose-lose situation writers of color face: Pander to the white literary establishment by exploiting trauma for publication, or risk being ignored and silenced. If They Come For Us , by Fatimah Asghar (One World/Penguin Random House, 2018). It seemed peaceful enougheach group would have their separate homes. Subsequent poems choreograph Asghars dynamic reconciliation and continued battles between her cultural identity, sexuality, and position in America. Tomorrow means I might. Monroe's "Open Door" policy, set forth in Volume I of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry's mission: to print the best poetry written today, regardless of style, genre, or approach. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. ISSN 2577-9427.NOTE: Advertisements and sponsorships contribute to hosting costs. Again? And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. But Asghar recognizes the limits and violence of language. Their dirge, my every-mornings minaret. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Co-creator and writer for the Emmy-nominated webseries Brown Girls, their work has appeared in Poetry, [1] Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets, [2] and other publications. It also runs through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a supposedly shared ancestral origin. 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? This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. I draw a ship on the map. 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 truly belong anywhere. 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. But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. 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. In 2011, she created a spoken word collective in Bosnia and . Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet and screenwriter. Everyday she prays. Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. 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. Epigraphs from Korean-American poet Suji Kwock Kim and Rajinder Singh, a survivor of the India/Pakistan Partition, and an explanation of the Partition prepare us for the painful, but necessary, poems to come. 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. 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.. Asghar in a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim-American author, creator, poet, screenwriter and educator who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. in the kitchen. Orphaned as a child and marginalized in America, Asghar captures the plight of alienation on a personal and political scale. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. have her forever. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. Kal means shes oiling my hairbefore the first day of school. they say it so often, it must be your name now, stranger. New York, NY 10001. The mother of Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters - died years ago. Stop living in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, demanding his dinner: american. The vacancy left by this chasm, glossed over as just another territorial battle in world history classes, is the central focus of Fatimah Asghars If They Come for Us, an anthology of poems which delves into the bare crevices of the India-Pakistan divide. Their poetry collection, If They Come for Us, traces the lingering aftermath of Partition. Fatimah Asghar. VS returns with a special bonus episode to tide you over until Season 3 drops in February. 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). After the Orlando Shooting Juniper Cruz 65. They cant touch anyone without teeth & spitunless one strips the other of their human skin. I collect words where I find them. Her references to pop music, odes to her pussy, and jokes about microaggressions are purposefully incongruous, and with them she defies the gaze that Zhang and Mehri write about. my father: sideburns down the length of his face my age now & ripe my age now & alive his husky voice's crackle like the night's wind through corn fields of bell-bottoms fields of pomade my mother's overlarge sunglasses crowded on her face crowded in the only . 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. 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