from the soil. A spell cast with the entiremouth. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. 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. 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. Copyright 2010-2019, The Adroit Journal. All rights reserved. have her forever. 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 Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominatedBrown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. 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. 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? These sly, adept poems work through circumstances under threat with audacity, humor, and wonder. 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 . [13], Along with her orphanhood, the legacy of Partition is another major theme in her poetry. 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. In Asghar's work, Partition becomes the wound that wounds all wounds. I have no blood. But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. In a later poem titled "Oil," Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing "My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. Its estimated that 1-2 million people died and 75-100,000 women were abducted and raped in the ensuing months.) my country is made / in my peoples image / if they come for you they / come for me too, she writes. The text, formed from the scraps of a burned notebook chronicling a circuitous reverse diaspora, is deliberately fragmented and refuses easy interpretation. I look up & make sure no one heard. All the people I could be are dangerous. from a poisonous one. 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 . Danez, Franny, and Safia talk unraveling shame, opening the door to a queer Muslim literary community, caesuras and Its Toaster Time! In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. However, she then describes how Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship / out on the map. By Fatimah Asghar. revealed to be a white man writing under a Chinese womans name. The towers fell two weeks, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them. Fatimah Asghar. he was there toothe day on Bens couch, wearingmy skirt, ranking the girls, in class. The novel follows the coming of age of three sisters who are orphaned following the sudden murder of their father. 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 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. 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. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. 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. 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. 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. 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. I buried it under a casket of scribbles. Poetry The forced migration of over 14 million peopleof Muslims to Pakistan and Hindus to Indiatore both families and land apart. Like many territorial disputes, the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, an ethnically diverse Himalayan region known for its natural beauty, was rooted in religion. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. I want Evanescence slowly. 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. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Translation: "I won't forget.". "WWE by Fatimah Asghar - Poems | Academy of American Poets", "Dark Noise: Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, Danez Smith & Jamila Woods", "Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships", "30 Under 30 2018: Hollywood & Entertainment", "For poet Fatimah Asghar, the word 'orphan' has more than one meaning", "How Fatimah Asghar turned the traumas of colonialism and diaspora into poetry", "Fatimah Asghar '11 on the Emmy-Nominated Webseries Recently Acquired by HBO | Mellon Mays Fellowship", "How They Got There: Sam Bailey & Fatimah Asghar, Creators of Brown Girls", "Fatimah Asghar's first collection of poetry, If They Come for Us, is a warning about the consequences of ignoring history", "5 Canadians nominated for first Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for women and non-binary writers, worth $150,000 (U.S.)", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fatimah_Asghar&oldid=1143884663, This page was last edited on 10 March 2023, at 14:06. Asghar told NBC News of her friendship with Woods. 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. 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. it makes of my mouth. by pathmark. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. 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. 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). If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. 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. just in case, I hear her say. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. 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. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. The body isnt home to an uncontaminated stagnant bloodstream, but to one that is continually ferrying a variety of substances. 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. 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. 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. The Im a silent girl, a rig ready to blow. Rehman offers a new kind of fairy tale, surreal yet rooted in harsh, ugly modern realities. Orphaned as a child and marginalized in America, Asghar captures the plight of alienation on a personal and political scale. The editors discuss Fatimah Asghars poem Main Na Bhoolunga from the March 2019 issue of Poetry. When Rivka reached out to me to do a profile on Fatimah Asghar, I could not have been more excited to interview someone whose work has affected me so much personally. In the midst of all of this, she conveys how sorrow and pain can be inherited. Asghar described . until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. In Oil, she recalls losing her parents as a child and going to elementary school during the beginning of the War on Terror: Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship 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. I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. 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. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier and Good Fossil Fuels, Two scholars exchange letters on poetry and climate. Jan 02, 2023 | By Fatimah Asghar | American Poetry Review Verified. Shes seen me at my worst, at my best, at my most insecure everything. 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. "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. 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. 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. Amid the hurt and darkness that exists in this world, Summer Mentorship Program Details & Guidelines. / I write Afghani under its hull. Her parents immigrated to the United States. I practice at night, the crater. 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. 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. New York, NY 10001. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. 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. 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've been constantly thinking about it, and looking back into it and trying to understand exactly what happened," she said in 2018. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? Yasmin Adele Majeed is the editorial coordinator for the Asian American Writers Workshop. Request Permissions. In 2011, she created a spoken word collective in Bosnia and . Copyright 2017 by Fatimah Asghar. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. The poem is composed of free unrhymed verse in a single stanza. 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. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. But whenever its on you watchthem snarl like mad dogs in a cagethese american men. 112 W 27th Street, Suite 600 Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. I draw a ship on the map. 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. In essence, the speakers world is as dissected and limiting as the Bingo board. 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. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions I think we are at war! [9] She has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, Kweli Journal, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. 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. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 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. The mother of Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters - died years ago. The partition of If They Come For Us memorializes the violence of borders by refusing the limits of the word partition itself. They cant touch anyone without teeth & spitunless one strips the other of their human skin. 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. Thank you for your support. 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. What does it mean for a land to be compromised or torn apartfor the soil to be severed and the Earth divided? But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. Circuitous reverse diaspora, is deliberately fragmented and refuses easy interpretation for you they Come. 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