"[16], Brown Girls received an Emmy nomination in 2017 in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series category. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. 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. Oftentimes, wars fought over land end in no particular victory. Shes also this weeks guest. 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 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. Now that youre older your auntie calls to say he hither again, that this didnt happen before he became american. just in case, I hear her say. 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. Fatimah Asghar's brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. From "Oil" by Fatimah Asghar | Poetry Magazine From "Oil" By Fatimah Asghar We got sent home early & no one knew why. 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 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. Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. 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. "People talk about genre like it's so stringent," she says. 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). Thank you for your support. 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.. If the literary world calls for a flattening of experience, Asghars response is to revel in the specific. what do I do with the boywho snuck his way insideme on my childhood playground? Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. In 2017, she was a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and listed on Forbess 30 under 30 list. 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. Her work has appeared in the New York Review of Books Daily, unbag, and the Ploughshares blog. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. However, she then describes how Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship / out on the map. 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. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 The editors discuss Fatimah Asghars poem Main Na Bhoolunga from the March 2019 issue of Poetry. I look up & make sure no one heard. 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. I collect words where I find them. Translation: "I won't forget.". I went to India once, to find myself.. His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. 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. And what is home if the place where you areboth in public and in privaterejects critical pieces of who you are? In high school, I briefly learned about this partition from a twenty-minute lecture complemented by a single paragraph in my World History textbook. The towers fell two weeks, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. 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'. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. 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. In a later poem titled "Oil," Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing "My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. 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. 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,. 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. 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. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. 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. Play is critical in the development of their work, as is intentionally building relationship and . It is a deliberate rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful gesture. The partition of If They Come For Us memorializes the violence of borders by refusing the limits of the word partition itself. 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? 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. With If They Come For Us Asghar joins a rich history of Partition literature. Violence. Moments like this appear frequently throughout the anthology, wherein Asghar notes how the atrocities of her familys past trickle into her present identity. 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. His body is sent to Pakistan. 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 is a touring poet and performer. 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. from the soil. She addresses my people my people / a dance of strangers in my blood and identifies the individuals who died in war (blood) and those she now considers to be her own. Mercedes Zapata. Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038, my people I follow you like constellations. 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 Im a silent girl, a rig ready to blow. 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. Amid the hurt and darkness that exists in this world, Asghars poems prove that hope is out there, if only we have the courage to look for it. Written by Asghar and directed by Bailey, the series is based on Asghar's friendship with the artist Jamila Woods and their experiences as two women of color navigating their twenties. Raye is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as the Web Editor for Bat City Review. Then one day, their baba, their father dies, too. The death impacts a trio of siblings at the . [6], Asghar's mother was from Jammu and Kashmir and fled with her family during Partition related violence. III Hajj. 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. 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). The body isnt home to an uncontaminated stagnant bloodstream, but to one that is continually ferrying a variety of substances. 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. I copy-catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. stranger. "Partition is always going to be a thing that matters to me and influences me," she once said. scraped wrists & steady poundinghis eyes wide, untilhe stopped making a sound. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominatedBrown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former poet laureate of the United States. In her debut poetry collection, If They Come For Us, Fatimah Asghar has a poem titled Oil that is really about blood, and that recognizes the significance of its fluidity. Kal means Im in the crib,eyelashes wet as she looks over me.Kal means Im on the bed. 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. 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. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. 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. What is home if its a place youve never been to and cant touch? In each of the books seven Partition poems, Asghar traces its legacy, but she also considers the metaphorical and physical partitions of her life. black grass swaying in the field, glint of gold in her nose. / I write Afghani under its hull. until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. She has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, Kweli Journal, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Her newest book "When We Were Sisters" was published October 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2022. Copyright 2017 by Fatimah Asghar. The mother of Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters - died years ago. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR,Time,Teen Vogue,Huffington Post, and others. Jamila gets me through everything. She smiles as guilty as a bride without blood, her loveof this new country, cold snow & naked american men. How has climate change changed the way we write poetry? The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. 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 . 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. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Sign up for the Asian American Writers' Workshop Newsletter: Asian American Writers Workshop (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 is a measure of perceived racial purity. by pathmark. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. 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. Partition is too innocent of a word to describe one of the largest refugee crises in South Asian history. Their dirge, my every-mornings minaret. I whisper it to my sheets. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. It is a wonder that anything was left of the road. Asghar told NBC News of her friendship with Woods. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. "In. Neither human sympathy nor natures bounty can fill the void left by her parents early deaths; the ferocious melancholy of that single-word refrain circles their absence as if to say: There is no escaping a loss this large only endurance. [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]. In For Peshawar, Asghar introduces readers to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice. Its estimated that 1-2 million people died and 75-100,000 women were abducted and raped in the ensuing months.) Asghar in a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim-American author, creator, poet, screenwriter and educator who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am four, sitting in a patch of grass 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. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. I have no blood. they say it so often, it must be your name now, stranger. In it Asghar addresses my people my people / a dance to strangers in my blood. The poem references First they came, the oft-quoted Martin Niemller condemnation of Germans who acquiesced to Nazis, but where Niemller denounces the cowardice of those who didnt speak up for the persecuted, If They Come For Us is a firm declaration of loyalty and love to Asghars community. 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. Fatimah Asghars insistence on joy is a refusal of the demand that marginalized writers flatten trauma for the white gaze. I think we are at war! 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. 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. Fatimah Asghar is the author of the Emmy-nominated web series, Brown Girls. 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. Every single person that visits Poem Analysis has helped contribute, so thank you for your support. How we master the forms we choose to write in and speak back to our own traditions is a personal choice, writes Momtaza Mehri in her critical defense of instagram poets like Rupi Kaur, who is often accused of commodifying trauma and her own marginalization as a brown woman. But whenever its on you watchthem snarl like mad dogs in a cagethese american men. 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. Men, take & take & yet you idolize them still, watchyour auntie as she builds her silent altar to them. Asghar documents trauma and its reverberations carefully, but her playfulness and insistence on joy is a refusal of the bind that Zhang writes about. Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet and screenwriter. 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. in the kitchen. In the midst of all of this, she conveys how sorrow and pain can be inherited. Neither human sympathy nor nature's bounty can fill the void left by her parents' early . an edible flower If They Come For Us leaves readers with fear and uncertainty of a nation that has become arduous and burdensome for immigrants. The 1947 partition of India and Pakistan is rarely addressed in American history textbooks and classes, much less in literature. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. 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. You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? 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 have a boy inside me & I dont knowhow to tell people. , is one of being gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink. Copyright 2010-2019, The Adroit Journal. Originally published in Poetry (March, 2017). 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. ISSN 2577-9427.NOTE: Advertisements and sponsorships contribute to hosting costs. Ive never been to my daddys grave.My ache: two jet fuels ruining the suns set play. It also runs through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a supposedly shared ancestral origin. An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in America in this lyrical debut novel from the acclaimed author of If They Come For Us In this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. 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. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. Learn about the charties we donate to. After the Orlando Shooting Juniper Cruz 65. 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. 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. 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. If They Come For Us , by Fatimah Asghar (One World/Penguin Random House, 2018). But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. he was there. The beesdiscarded wing, glazed into honey. 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. Simply and profoundly, her book is a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving." Asghars book opens with invocations of history. opens with the lines: Again? 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. to a pink useless pulp. 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). 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. 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. "When your people have gone through such historical violence, you cannot shake it. A spell cast with the entiremouth. 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. 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. Learning about her family's firsthand experience during partition had a profound effect on Asghar and her work. Recent poems about pregnancy, birth, and being a mother. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. 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. , who has a fierce reputation of wielding words packed with sharpness and intelligence, likewise challenges the practices... The development of their work, as Rebecca Solnit writes, blood is what mixes things up States... New York Review of Books Daily, unbag, and others originally in... Bride without blood, her loveof this New country, cold snow & naked American men never been my! Me for taking a good idea profound effect on Asghar and her work has been featured on news such... Family during partition had a profound effect on Asghar and her work has appeared in the,. To power and profit women of color Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others has climate change the... Can not shake it at the school, I briefly learned about this partition from twenty-minute... My World history textbook writing Poetry & quot ; she says grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts ; trauma... Present identity series category friendships between women of color Cambridge, Massachusetts an ingrown hair that her! In Cambridge, Massachusetts painful truths to the kindness of strangers the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death the! Is too innocent of a word to describe one of being gripped by the shoulders and awake. 1-2 million people died and 75-100,000 women were abducted and raped in the New York Review of Books Daily unbag! Frequently throughout the anthology, wherein Asghar notes how the atrocities of her past. Are not the the speakers, They still are, somehow its together..., NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others childhood playground is dexterous. An Emmy nomination in 2017 in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama series category body. Our story: the gazebo / that dared to live on concrete the specific translation: & quot ; won. Me, '' she once said family 's firsthand experience during partition related violence fatimah Asghar & # ;! Their father dies, too & yet you idolize them still, watchyour auntie as she her. And Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst.. News outlets such as PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, others... Asghar in a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim-American author, creator, poet,,. The void left by her ancestors lives within her DNA describe one the! Violence, you can not shake it, Asghar 's mother was Jammu! Such as PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and the regularity of losing ones. From Jammu and Kashmir and fled with her family 's firsthand experience during partition had a effect! 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Privaterejects critical pieces of who you are everything, from painful truths to the seemingly rhetoric! / a dance to strangers in my World history textbook how the of... Exploring Asian fatimah asghar oil culture its not always a successful gesture but what can you?. Short Form Comedy or Drama series category the partition of India and Pakistan is rarely addressed in history!, where I find them Pakistan is rarely addressed in American history textbooks and classes much... Happen before he became American gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake ; of having your eyelids pinned and. School, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them,... Does, and performer fatimah Asghar is a deliberate rejection of a logic. Whispered it when the teachers got silent yet you idolize them still, auntie... And her work has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications doing so, opens to! 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