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 body isnt home to an uncontaminated stagnant bloodstream, but to one that is continually ferrying a variety of substances. Oftentimes, wars fought over land end in no particular victory. Danez and Franny hop on the ole zoom zoom with legendary poet and beard icon John Murillo. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. 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. 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. It also runs through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a supposedly shared ancestral origin. it makes of my mouth. Kal means shes oiling my hairbefore the first day of school. Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. 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. I collect words where I find them. 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.. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. 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. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. The "In. 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. 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 . Ive never been to my daddys grave.My ache: two jet fuels ruining the suns set play. 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. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. In Other Body, Asghar writes, In my sex dreams a penis / swings between my legs, and mentions how her moustache grew longer than anyone elses in her class at school. The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. I went to India once, to find myself.. Please choose below to continue. Fatimah Asghar Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. what do I do with the boywho snuck his way insideme on my childhood playground? Partition is too innocent of a word to describe one of the largest refugee crises in South Asian history. Their poetry collection, If They Come for Us, traces the lingering aftermath of Partition. 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. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. Sacraments Ladan Osman 62. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. 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? Its estimated that 1-2 million people died and 75-100,000 women were abducted and raped in the ensuing months.) 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. 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. Main Na Bhoolunga. I draw a ship on the map. 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. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. Like many territorial disputes, the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, an ethnically diverse Himalayan region known for its natural beauty, was rooted in religion. out on the map. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. 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. One Partition poem swings between 1947 to the present day, collapsing time in a way that illuminates the ways what happened then affects her now: 1993: summer in New York City 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. Does it matter how? Used with the permission of the poet. Anyone can read what you share. 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. The muse in literature is a source of inspiration for the writer. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Stop living in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, demanding his dinner: american. His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. 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 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. And what is home if the place where you areboth in public and in privaterejects critical pieces of who you are? Orphaned as a child and marginalized in America, Asghar captures the plight of alienation on a personal and political scale. Again? "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. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. 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. Jan 02, 2023 | By Fatimah Asghar | American Poetry Review Verified. The speakers feeling of un-belonging continues even at home, as she comes of age without the guidance of a mother and father. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier and Good Fossil Fuels, Two scholars exchange letters on poetry and climate. until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. 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. If They Come For Us , by Fatimah Asghar (One World/Penguin Random House, 2018). In Schizophrene, Kapil tackles the problem of representation by writing towards lacunae. Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. They cant touch anyone without teeth & spitunless one strips the other of their human skin. Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. Kal means Im in the crib. Theres an importance to recognizing the many ways histories of violence trickle through our livesthrough language, family, pop songs, policybut when the metaphor is stretched too thin, it risks losing its specific, potent significance. 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. Translation: "I won't forget.". 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. These sly, adept poems work through circumstances under threat with audacity, humor, and wonder. In 2011, she created a spoken word collective in Bosnia and . Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective[3] and a Kundiman Fellow. 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. 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. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. 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?" Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. Fatimah Asghar's debut novel starts in a precarious place with the death of the main character's father in the first few lines. They both died by the time she was five, leaving her an orphan. Jamila gets me through everything. Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. Neither human sympathy nor nature's bounty can fill the void left by her parents' early . Asghar has a strong reputation for challenging norms, and for intelligent, sharp writing. 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. like whenthat man held me down & we said no. Rolls attah & pounds the keemaat night watches the bodies of these glistening men. Copyright 2010-2019, The Adroit Journal. Her parents immigrated to the United States. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. 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. It is a deliberate rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful gesture. an edible flower She is a touring poet and performer. 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. just in case, I hear her say. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions I learned that India had been split into two, with Hindus residing in Indian territories and Muslims living in Pakistan. scraped wrists & steady poundinghis eyes wide, untilhe stopped making a sound. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. For poet Fatimah Asghar, the word 'orphan' has more than one meaning. a little symphony, so round. 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. If you mean the poem, {From "Oil"}, I take it as one little girl living in the U.S. with her aunt. 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. After high school Asghar attended Brown University,[11] where she majored in International Relations and Africana Studies. 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. Violence. Moments like this appear frequently throughout the anthology, wherein Asghar notes how the atrocities of her familys past trickle into her present identity. 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. 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. The Woman in the White Chador Farnaz Fatemi 61. Every nonhuman living thing is held captive by our actions. In her poem "Super Orphan," Asghar once again explores the impact of their absence. In the midst of all of this, she conveys how sorrow and pain can be inherited. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 Hindi na ibinalik / ng mga dayo ang kinuhang / lupain | The settlers never returned / the land they grabbed. 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