Orphaned as a child and marginalized in America, Asghar captures the plight of alienation on a personal and political scale. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. Fatimah Asghar's brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Tomorrow means I might. Play is critical in the development of their work, as is intentionally building relationship and . 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. The mother of Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters - died years ago. But Asghar recognizes the limits and violence of language. 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. Big and muscular, neck full of veins, bulging in the pen.Her eyes kajaled & wide, glued to sweaty american men. For Dark Noise, the work of the poet is inseparable from politics, and If They Come For Us is a collection that reflects those shared aesthetic and political commitments. have her forever. just in case, I hear her say. Used with the permission of the poet. a little symphony, so round. 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. Shes also this weeks guest. 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 cultural memory is lodged in the speaker like a knifeone that she may not be able to remove, but one that she could choose not to twist. revealed to be a white man writing under a Chinese womans name. 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. it makes of my mouth. Yasmin Adele Majeed is the editorial coordinator for the Asian American Writers Workshop. 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. This is the other bind of writing mass historical trauma into poetrythat true representation is necessarily impossible, but also that diasporic writing about Partition is often accused of exploiting historical violence for the sake of personal narrative and aesthetics. 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. But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. he was there toothe day on Bens couch, wearingmy skirt, ranking the girls, in class. Kal means Im in the crib. stranger. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. Does it matter how? The poem begins with the 2014 terrorist attack on The Army Public School in Peshawar, forcing Ashghar to question whether we are meant to lower [our babies] into the ground / from the moment they are born. Asghars tone is pensive as she grapples with the notion of something as brutal and wrongful as death proximate to young individuals who have yet to understand what it means to be threatened. But, through these inheritances, there is also care and comfort, sweetness and love, that provide structure to our identities, bodies, and imaginations: For the fire my people my people / the long years weve survived the long / years yet to come I see you map / my sky the light your lantern long / ahead & I follow I follow., The Nassau Literary Review5534 Frist CenterPrinceton, NJ 08544. It is sacred, like the blood of Christ, and sinful, in that its stains signal guilt. Orphaned as a girl, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. As though I told you how the first time. III Hajj. 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. Freedom Bar Asnia Asim 71. A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. I have a boy inside me & I dont knowhow to tell people. 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. This is true not only of race and heritage, but also of gender identity and sexuality, and many poems attempt to navigate those complexitiesin terms of a relationship with the self and a relationship with religion. Main Na Bhoolunga. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. The text, formed from the scraps of a burned notebook chronicling a circuitous reverse diaspora, is deliberately fragmented and refuses easy interpretation. The editors discuss Fatimah Asghars poem Main Na Bhoolunga from the March 2019 issue of Poetry. from the soil. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. . 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. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. in your family's house, you: runaway dog turned wild. (The Partition was the division of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947, which, Asghar writes, resulted in the forced migration of at least 14 million people as they fled genocide and ethnic cleansing. [17], When We Were Sisters was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in 2023.[18]. 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. The expansion of the popular landscape of poetry leaves more room for writing that isnt limited to representation, and for a readership outside of the white gaze. crawling away from her, my fatherback from work. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. In For Peshawar, Asghar introduces readers to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice. like your little cousin who pops gum & wears bras now: a stranger. 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). A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. It is a wonder that anything was left of the road. After great pain. 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 has a strong reputation for challenging norms, and for intelligent, sharp writing. 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. As the poem progresses, Asghar becomes further distanced from the events, seeming to remember less and less. Copyright 2017 by Fatimah Asghar. 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. 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. watching my beloveds through Facetime the tens of tens of apps downloaded so I can hear the scattered voices of everyone I love & the silence of my apartment building so loud my whole world . "[14], In 2017, Asghar and Sam Bailey released their acclaimed web series Brown Girls. 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. 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?" This could be someone they know or a direct reference to the traditional Greek muses. "[16], Brown Girls received an Emmy nomination in 2017 in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series category. Her uncle described how the family was forced to leave Kashmir for Lahore and told her about the impact of being refugees in a new land affected them. Give me my mother for no, other reason than I deserve her.If yesterday & tomorrow are the samepluck the flower of my mothers body. Every single person that visits Poem Analysis has helped contribute, so thank you for your support. 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. Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. Simply and profoundly, her book is a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving." the sweet, rich scent, / the cream and white of the magnolia blossom. I draw a ship on the map. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. These poems return to the question of what home means, asking what it is to be in a body that doesnt always feel like a safe place. I practice at night, the crater. Is it the physical ground that separates, or the people, whose homes, languages, and rituals are woven into the land? 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. Poetry We work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. 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. from the soil. Fatimah Asghar. Asghars approach is similarly multimodal. Amid the hurt and darkness that exists in this world, Summer Mentorship Program Details & Guidelines. Home is the first grave. As though I told you how the first time.Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave.Let them rest; my parents stay dead. The kids at school ask me where Im from & I have no answer. Franny and Danez talk with Pat about the fertile soil of solitude, falling in love Raych Jackson swings through the VS studio to talk her win at NUPIC (The National Poetry Individual Competition), the brilliant kidlets in the third grade class she teaches, and remixing Safia Elhillo is a goshdarn timespace-suspending poet. 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.. Her father was from Pakistan. The towers fell two weeks, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. Request Permissions. Sometimes, English needs to be broken, according to poet Fatimah Asghar. 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