She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Fatimah Asghars insistence on joy is a refusal of the demand that marginalized writers flatten trauma for the white gaze. from a poisonous one. . Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. Main Na Bhoolunga. We work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. 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). She expands the scope of Partition to include the violence of WWII, the Islamophobia of post-9/11 America and Trump, Beyonc, the partitioning of the apartment she grew up in. The I look up & make sure no one heard. 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. 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. 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? Rolls attah & pounds the keemaat night watches the bodies of these glistening men. [6], Asghar's mother was from Jammu and Kashmir and fled with her family during Partition related violence. black grass swaying in the field, glint of gold in her nose. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. These inheritances seep from country to country, body to body, and word to word, generating animosity and division. Originally published in Poetry (March, 2017). Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet and screenwriter. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, The Pinch, and elsewhere. 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. Her newest book "When We Were Sisters" was published October 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2022. 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. Partition is too innocent of a word to describe one of the largest refugee crises in South Asian history. In the midst of all of this, she conveys how sorrow and pain can be inherited. Play is critical in the development of their work, as is intentionally building relationship and . 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. I buried it under a casket of scribbles. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. from the soil. 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. What is home if its a place youve never been to and cant touch? I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. Their dirge, my every-mornings minaret. 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). & my boy, my lovely boyhe clawed & bit & cried just likewe were back on the dirt playground. If They Come For Us leaves readers with fear and uncertainty of a nation that has become arduous and burdensome for immigrants. Every single person that visits Poem Analysis has helped contribute, so thank you for your support. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. just in case, I hear her say. The Woman in the White Chador Farnaz Fatemi 61. 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. Anneanne Tells Me Beyza Ozer 67. 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. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. like whenthat man held me down & we said no. 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. [4] She received the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation in 2017,[5] and has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. 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. 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. In For Peshawar, Asghar introduces readers to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice. 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. 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. Their experiences mirror the game: move into any squarein any direction on the board, and a microaggression takes place; the only safe haven on the board sits in the center: Home. Asghar told NBC News of her friendship with Woods. Rehman offers a new kind of fairy tale, surreal yet rooted in harsh, ugly modern realities. "When your people have gone through such historical violence, you cannot shake it. "I have no blood. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. After great pain. FATIMAH ASGHAR From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. She smiles as guilty as a bride without blood, her loveof this new country, cold snow & naked american men. You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? 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. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. This data is anonymized, and will not be used for marketing purposes. Elsewhere, a new history / Of touch, not pitted against the land. But Asghar recognizes the limits and violence of language. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier and Good Fossil Fuels, Two scholars exchange letters on poetry and climate. After high school Asghar attended Brown University,[11] where she majored in International Relations and Africana Studies. 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. "In. It is sacred, like the blood of Christ, and sinful, in that its stains signal guilt. 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. Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038, my people I follow you like constellations. 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. Where I . Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. Everywhere I look graves.Would I trust a God that promised me my family?Does it matter how, if theyre gone, twenty-five years, a gravewhats left of their remains? Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. Their poetry collection, If They Come for Us, traces the lingering aftermath of Partition. It is a deliberate rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful gesture. 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? 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. is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. 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. 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. It first appeared in Poetry Magazine in 2017. I draw a ship on the map. 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 . In a later poem titled "Oil," Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing "My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. 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. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. 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. 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. Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" In high school, I briefly learned about this partition from a twenty-minute lecture complemented by a single paragraph in my World History textbook. revealed to be a white man writing under a Chinese womans name. 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. "And in a lot of ways we are. I went to India once, to find myself.. Tomorrow means I might. it makes of my mouth. Does it matter how? 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. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. Kal means Im in the crib. 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'. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. an edible flower It is largely written in lower case, with the . Translation: "I won't forget.". Can't blame me for taking a good idea. 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 . Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. It seemed peaceful enougheach group would have their separate homes. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 | Only the air was heavy and moist, like the breath of an enormous, mysterious beast. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. your own auntie calls you ghareeb. 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. 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. 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. For poet Fatimah Asghar, the word 'orphan' has more than one meaning. 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. 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. With If They Come For Us Asghar joins a rich history of Partition literature. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominatedBrown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. I learned that India had been split into two, with Hindus residing in Indian territories and Muslims living in Pakistan. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR,Time,Teen Vogue,Huffington Post, and others. 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. VS returns with a special bonus episode to tide you over until Season 3 drops in February. [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]. Poetry Nov 2, 2015 3:34 PM EDT. In Raw Silk Meena Alexander links the fraught histories of Partition, the 1965 War between India and Pakistan, the 2002 Gujarat riots and 9/11; Kundiman Prize-winning writer Adeeba Talukder writes about mental illness and postcolonial trauma in her own work; and the experimental poet Bhanu Kapil pulls together psychoanalysis, Deleuzian theory, and personal memoir in Schizophrene. 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? 2017 Poetry Foundation 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. 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. what do I do with the boywho snuck his way insideme on my childhood playground? I think we are at war! However, she then describes how Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship / out on the map. Learn about the charties we donate to. 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. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? 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. (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. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. Fatimah Asghar's brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. in the kitchen. Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. The kids at school ask me where Im from & I have no answer. to a pink useless pulp. 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). The blood clotting, oil in my veins. After the Orlando Shooting Juniper Cruz 65. Copyright 2017 by Fatimah Asghar. 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). Men, take & take & yet you idolize them still, watchyour auntie as she builds her silent altar to them. I collect words where I find them. Kal means shes oiling my hairbefore the first day of school. I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. 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. With precise words, she expresses that the dirge, our hearts, pounds vicious, as we prepare / the white linen, ready to wrap our bodies. The conversation around death and the normalization of the ritual of burying bodies highlights just how routine violent oppression was in Peshawar during the partition. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. Asghar in a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim-American author, creator, poet, screenwriter and educator who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Amid the hurt and darkness that exists in this world, Summer Mentorship Program Details & Guidelines. 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. This page is not available in other languages. 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. 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. Smell is the Last Memory to Go 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. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. 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,. With familial roots still deeply tied to Pakistan and the divided territory of Kashmir, Asghar, a queer Muslim teenager living in a post-9/11 America, was left to navigate not only the partition of India and Pakistan, but likewise the numerous boundaries entangled in her identity and painted on her body. 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. 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. Its estimated that 1-2 million people died and 75-100,000 women were abducted and raped in the ensuing months.) 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. A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. Ive never been to my daddys grave.My ache: two jet fuels ruining the suns set play. 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. Yasmin Adele Majeed is the editorial coordinator for the Asian American Writers Workshop. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective[3] and a Kundiman Fellow. Returns with a special fatimah asghar oil episode to tide you over until Season 3 drops in February insistence on joy a. 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