And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. It is largely written in lower case, with the . All rights reserved. Kal means shes oiling my hairbefore the first day of school. "When your people have gone through such historical violence, you cannot shake it. This data is anonymized, and will not be used for marketing purposes. I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. 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?" 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. Its a gesture taken up by many of her peersinstead of pandering to whiteness, writers like Chen Chen, Danez Smith, and Zhang write towards, and out of, their communities. New York, NY 10001. Rather, a series of hasty terms and temporary promises are madein other words, there is compromise. Every single person that visits Poem Analysis has helped contribute, so thank you for your support. 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. Subsequent poems choreograph Asghars dynamic reconciliation and continued battles between her cultural identity, sexuality, and position in America. But whenever its on you watchthem snarl like mad dogs in a cagethese american men. 2017 Poetry Foundation Stop living in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, demanding his dinner: american. I copy-catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. 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. In 2011, she created a spoken word collective in Bosnia and . an edible flower 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. 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. Asghars approach is similarly multimodal. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. These sly, adept poems work through circumstances under threat with audacity, humor, and wonder. "[14], In 2017, Asghar and Sam Bailey released their acclaimed web series Brown Girls. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. 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. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. Now that youre older your auntie calls to say he hither again, that this didnt happen before he became american. until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. 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. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Im a silent girl, a rig ready to blow. 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. revealed to be a white man writing under a Chinese womans name. 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. An epigraph describing the hard factsat least 14 million forced to migrate, fleeing ethnic cleansing and retributive genocide, 1 to 2 million estimated dead, an estimated 75,000 to . I collect words where I find them. However, the paragraph failed to address the bloody legacy of the great dividethe violence entrenched within the border, the millions of Hindus and Muslims who trekked in opposite directions, and those who were unsure of which land they belonged to. The 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. 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. 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 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 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. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. / A man? And again, in The Last Summer of Innocence, questions of the role of the body, and of gender norms, resurface. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Translation: "I won't forget.". Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038, my people I follow you like constellations. FATIMAH ASGHAR From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. I want Evanescence slowly. Rehman offers a new kind of fairy tale, surreal yet rooted in harsh, ugly modern realities. crawling away from her, my fatherback from work. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? Learning about her family's firsthand experience during partition had a profound effect on Asghar and her work. 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.. 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. 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. opens with the lines: Again? The blood clotting, oil in my veins. But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. Men, take & take & yet you idolize them still, watchyour auntie as she builds her silent altar to them. black grass swaying in the field, glint of gold in her nose. Her work has appeared in the New York Review of Books Daily, unbag, and the Ploughshares blog. 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). they say it so often, it must be your name now, stranger. he was there. She has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, Kweli Journal, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. I think we are at war! This battle with death, which Asghar and her family face in both Peshawar and America, is then slowly reconciled in a later poem entitled Gazebo, a piece which details the building of a safe space, in which Asghar writes, We had too many funerals to waste / flowers. Learn about the charties we donate to. Fatimah Asghar, writer and filmmaker Naomi Joshi Writer, artist, and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar refuses to be defined by genre. (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. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. 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 is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominatedBrown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. 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. Asghar lost her parents young; with family roots in Pakistan and in divided Kashmir, she grew up in the United States, a queer Muslim teenager and an orphan in the confusing, unfair months and. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. 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. 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. 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. 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. Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. Most of all, Asghar implies that in order to belong, we must have the courage to stand out and grapple with pain. 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. I draw a ship on the map. If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. This page is not available in other languages. After great pain. Elsewhere, a new history / Of touch, not pitted against the land. 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. 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). 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. "And in a lot of ways we are. 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 . In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. 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. If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. 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. 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. Sometimes, English needs to be broken, according to poet Fatimah Asghar. Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. 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. 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. Originally published in Poetry (March, 2017). Blood is a measure of perceived racial purity. It is through you visiting Poem Analysis that we are able to contribute to charity. Anneanne Tells Me Beyza Ozer 67. her knees fold on the rundown mattress, a prayer to WWEHer tasbeeh & TV: the only things she puts before her husband. 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