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. Like many territorial disputes, the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, an ethnically diverse Himalayan region known for its natural beauty, was rooted in religion. Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. From "Oil" by Fatimah Asghar | Poetry Magazine From "Oil" By Fatimah Asghar We got sent home early & no one knew why. But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. 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. They are taken into the custody . Poem Solutions Limited International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct,London, EC1A 2BN, United Kingdom, Discover and learn about the greatest poetry ever straight to your inbox, Discover and learn about the greatest poetry, straight to your inbox. These inheritances seep from country to country, body to body, and word to word, generating animosity and division. 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. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. The experience of reading Fatimah Asghars 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. FATIMAH ASGHAR From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. scraped wrists & steady poundinghis eyes wide, untilhe stopped making a sound. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. 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. 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. Fatimah Asghar, writer and filmmaker Naomi Joshi Writer, artist, and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar refuses to be defined by genre. 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. 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. The mother of Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters - died years ago. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. 2017 Poetry Foundation 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'. If the literary world calls for a flattening of experience, Asghars response is to revel in the specific. I collect words where I find them. In her poem "Super Orphan," Asghar once again explores the impact of their absence. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. Asghars book opens with invocations of history. youre kashmiri until they burn your home, she writes in the first Partition poem, delineating the ways bodies and identities are at the whim of the shifting logic of borders. The Woman in the White Chador Farnaz Fatemi 61. The poem is composed of free unrhymed verse in a single stanza. Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. [13], Along with her orphanhood, the legacy of Partition is another major theme in her poetry. 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. 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). 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? 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. 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. Stop living in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, demanding his dinner: american. 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. Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. I buried it under a casket of scribbles / All of the people I could be are dangerous / The blood clotting, oil in my veins. With the tragic destruction of the Twin Towers during 9/11, Asghar returns to a place of discomfort and hesitancy of her originsquestioning whether she could carry her cultural heritage with pride or trauma in a grieving, post-9/11 America that views individuals like her with fear and distrust. 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. Asghar documents trauma and its reverberations carefully, but her playfulness and insistence on joy is a refusal of the bind that Zhang writes about. 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 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?" She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. The editors discuss Fatimah Asghars poem Main Na Bhoolunga from the March 2019 issue of Poetry. Copyright 2017 by Fatimah Asghar. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. Again? 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. It is largely written in lower case, with the . Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. 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. 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. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Tomorrow means I might. 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. the sweet, rich scent, / the cream and white of the magnolia blossom. 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? 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. Big and muscular, neck full of veins, bulging in the pen.Her eyes kajaled & wide, glued to sweaty american men. from the soil. Kal means Im in the crib. 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. Co-creator and writer for the Emmy-nominated webseries Brown Girls, their work has appeared in Poetry, [1] Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets, [2] and other publications. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. As though I told you how the first time. Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. Shes also this weeks guest. Heres your auntie, in her best gold-threaded shalwaarkameez, made small by this land of american men. 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 read and reread the vague words, searching for a more robust explanation, personal accounts, or primary documents, but ultimately concluded that the India-Pakistan divide was only as significant as the condensed 300-word synopsis made it out to be. Is it the physical ground that separates, or the people, whose homes, languages, and rituals are woven into the land? His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. crawling away from her, my fatherback from work. Yasmin Adele Majeed is the editorial coordinator for the Asian American Writers Workshop. I read another poem of Fatimah's, entitled, "Oil," and in it, she speaks about what it was like for her as a child after 9/11. Allah, you gave us a languagewhere yesterday & tomorroware the same word. 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. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. 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. he was there toothe day on Bens couch, wearingmy skirt, ranking the girls, in class. 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. 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. Rehman offers a new kind of fairy tale, surreal yet rooted in harsh, ugly modern realities. The novel follows the coming of age of three sisters who are orphaned following the sudden murder of their father. Her parents immigrated to the United States. 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. By Fatimah Asghar. I have no blood. I think we are at war! But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. Everyday she prays. Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. Her father was from Pakistan. 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. Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former poet laureate of the United States. | Only the air was heavy and moist, like the breath of an enormous, mysterious beast. I look up & make sure no one heard. Please choose below to continue. 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. 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. opens with the lines: Again? 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. Then one day, their baba, their father dies, too. "[16], Brown Girls received an Emmy nomination in 2017 in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series category. In Schizophrene, Kapil tackles the problem of representation by writing towards lacunae. Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet and screenwriter. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. 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. have her forever. They cant touch anyone without teeth & spitunless one strips the other of their human skin. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. Simply and profoundly, her book is a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving." 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,. His body is sent to Pakistan. Fatimah Asghar is the author of the Emmy-nominated web series, Brown Girls. 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). 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. 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? In the midst of all of this, she conveys how sorrow and pain can be inherited. A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. your own auntie calls you ghareeb. All rights reserved. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. It is a wonder that anything was left of the road. And what is home if the place where you areboth in public and in privaterejects critical pieces of who you are? It is a deliberate rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful gesture. like your little cousin who pops gum & wears bras now: a stranger. Rather, a series of hasty terms and temporary promises are madein other words, there is compromise. Mercedes Zapata. from a poisonous one. Kal means shesdancing at my wedding not-yet come. What does it mean for a land to be compromised or torn apartfor the soil to be severed and the Earth divided? 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). All the people I could be are dangerous. I buried it under a casket of scribbles. 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. Raye is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as the Web Editor for Bat City Review. Even now, you dont get it. Where I . 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. If They Come For Us , by Fatimah Asghar (One World/Penguin Random House, 2018). 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. Blood is a measure of perceived racial purity. 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. Theres noplace to see them 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. 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. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? 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. Ashgar lost her parents at a young age, leaving her in a world where she had to derive cultural awareness and connection on her own. Originally published in Poetry (March, 2017). Used with the permission of the poet. he was there. In 2011, she created a spoken word collective in Bosnia and . just in case, I hear her say. Does it matter how? The 1947 partition of India and Pakistan is rarely addressed in American history textbooks and classes, much less in literature. ISSN 2577-9427.NOTE: Advertisements and sponsorships contribute to hosting costs. 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). 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. 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