Blood is a measure of perceived racial purity. Kal means shesdancing at my wedding not-yet come. Selected by Rita Dove. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. I copy-catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? It is a deliberate rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful gesture. 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). In Microaggression Bingo, her words, much like her personal and cultural identities, are carefully divided and fitted in the structured tiles of a bingo board, with the central free space square reading Dont Leave Your House For A Day - Safe. The surrounding tiles are filled with chilling statements and memories such as Casting Call to audition for a battered Hijabi Woman and Editor recommends you add more white people to your story to be more relatable. The poem illustrates the limited space and movements the speaker is able to take as a Pakistani-Muslim subject to microaggressions in America, a land that pledges to be rooted in diversity. 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. 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. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. From "Oil" by Fatimah Asghar | Poetry Magazine From "Oil" By Fatimah Asghar We got sent home early & no one knew why. just in case. Rehman offers a new kind of fairy tale, surreal yet rooted in harsh, ugly modern realities. Does it matter how? 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 collect words where I find them. But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. Asghar continues to elaborate on this community, writing my people my people I cant be lost / when I see you my compass is brown & gold & blood / my compass a Muslim teenager / snapback & hightops gracing the subway platform, further stressing how she is able to lean on those who have sacrificed for herthose who have been and continue to be there for her. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. Simply and profoundly, her book is a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving." Orphaned as a child and marginalized in America, Asghar captures the plight of alienation on a personal and political scale. Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. After great pain. 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. 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. 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. 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 . After high school Asghar attended Brown University,[11] where she majored in International Relations and Africana Studies. Later in the poem, Asghar directly addresses death, stating, in all our family histories, one wrong / turn & then, death. In essence, the speakers world is as dissected and limiting as the Bingo board. [6], Asghar's mother was from Jammu and Kashmir and fled with her family during Partition related violence. Her work has appeared in the New York Review of Books Daily, unbag, and the Ploughshares blog. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. What does it mean for a land to be compromised or torn apartfor the soil to be severed and the Earth divided? She is a touring poet and performer. 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. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. "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. 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? Learn about the charties we donate to. Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. 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. 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. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. [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. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. The blood clotting, oil in my veins. Fatimah Asghar Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. [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]. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. Mercedes Zapata. 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. The death impacts a trio of siblings at the . Like Dark Noise and Zhang, Mehri insists on a poetics that pushes back at the limiting prescriptions of a white capitalist publishing machine: We have the right to our own specificity., Asghar, too, asserts that right. 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 Asghar told NBC News of her friendship with Woods. 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. Kal means Im in the crib. 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. 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. Anneanne Tells Me Beyza Ozer 67. from a poisonous one. This data is anonymized, and will not be used for marketing purposes. 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. 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.". 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. 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 the literary world calls for a flattening of experience, Asghars response is to revel in the specific. 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. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. Theres noplace to see them again. In a later poem titled "Oil," Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing "My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. In her poem "Super Orphan," Asghar once again explores the impact of their absence. 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. black grass swaying in the field, glint of gold in her nose. What is home if its a place youve never been to and cant touch? FATIMAH ASGHAR From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. The muse in literature is a source of inspiration for the writer. Kal means shes oiling my hairbefore the first day of school. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. 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. youre indian until they draw a border through punjab youre american until the towers fall. , is one of being gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink. 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?" Jan 02, 2023 | By Fatimah Asghar | American Poetry Review Verified. to a pink useless pulp. The I have no blood. Subsequent poems choreograph Asghars dynamic reconciliation and continued battles between her cultural identity, sexuality, and position in America. Is it the physical ground that separates, or the people, whose homes, languages, and rituals are woven into the land? 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 father was from Pakistan. His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. "And in a lot of ways we are. Asghar has a strong reputation for challenging norms, and for intelligent, sharp writing. from the soil. 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). 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. Let's ask Fatimah Asghar, the author of the. her knees fold on the rundown mattress, a prayer to WWEHer tasbeeh & TV: the only things she puts before her husband. 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. 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). opens with the lines: Again? Tomorrow means I might. I collect words where I find them. 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. 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. crawling away from her, my fatherback from work. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? If you mean the poem, {From "Oil"}, I take it as one little girl living in the U.S. with her aunt. 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. The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. 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. 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,. 2017 Poetry Foundation In high school, I briefly learned about this partition from a twenty-minute lecture complemented by a single paragraph in my World History textbook. III Hajj. She has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, Kweli Journal, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR,Time,Teen Vogue,Huffington Post, and others. in the kitchen. 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. I whisper it to my sheets. Kalmeans I wake to her strange voice. a little symphony, so round. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Elsewhere, a new history / Of touch, not pitted against the land. Rather, a series of hasty terms and temporary promises are madein other words, there is compromise. Learning about her family's firsthand experience during partition had a profound effect on Asghar and her work. 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'. In Schizophrene, Kapil tackles the problem of representation by writing towards lacunae. New York, NY 10001. in your family's house, you: runaway dog turned wild. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 Now that youre older your auntie calls to say he hither again, that this didnt happen before he became american. 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. She smiles as guilty as a bride without blood, her loveof this new country, cold snow & naked american men. Raye is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as the Web Editor for Bat City Review. 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. Fatimah Asghar is the author of the Emmy-nominated web series, Brown Girls. an aunt teaches me how to tell 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. Please choose below to continue. 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. Even now, you dont get it. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions It first appeared in Poetry Magazine in 2017. 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. 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. 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. Main Na Bhoolunga. 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. Sacraments Ladan Osman 62. ""I've been constantly thinking about it, and looking back into it and trying to understand exactly what happened," she said in 2018. until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. In For Peshawar, Asghar introduces readers to the seemingly comfortable rhetoric around death and the regularity of losing loved ones amidst injustice. "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. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. [13], Along with her orphanhood, the legacy of Partition is another major theme in her poetry. Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former poet laureate of the United States. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. She covers bruises & never lets us eat leftovers: a good wife.Its something in their nature: what america does to men. 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? A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. 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? Her parents immigrated to the United States. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective[3] and a Kundiman Fellow. As the poem progresses, Asghar becomes further distanced from the events, seeming to remember less and less. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. It seemed peaceful enougheach group would have their separate homes. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. 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. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. 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. Poetry How has climate change changed the way we write 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 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. . If They Come For Us leaves readers with fear and uncertainty of a nation that has become arduous and burdensome for immigrants. scraped wrists & steady poundinghis eyes wide, untilhe stopped making a sound. 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. 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. have her forever. 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. "[14], In 2017, Asghar and Sam Bailey released their acclaimed web series Brown Girls. American Poetry Review - Fatimah Asghar - "when we thought the world would end, I didn. Fatimah Asghar's brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. This page is not available in other languages. 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. Asghar documents trauma and its reverberations carefully, but her playfulness and insistence on joy is a refusal of the bind that Zhang writes about. Home is the first grave. Big and muscular, neck full of veins, bulging in the pen.Her eyes kajaled & wide, glued to sweaty american men. It is a call for a poetics that combats those relationships: We reject attitudes that view the lives of marginalized and terrorized people as profit, as click-bait, as tickets to fame, as anything but people deserving of better.. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. In Asghar's latest collection of poetry, If They Come for Us, the speaker explores her identity as a marginalized orphan in a world that consistently tells her that she does not belong. 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. A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. Multiple poems, all titled Partition, navigate not only the literal and historical meaning of the Partition, but also the divisions of the home, of gender, familyand, at times, how those divisions might be reconciled, if possible. Sign up for the Asian American Writers' Workshop Newsletter: Asian American Writers Workshop The mother of Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters - died years ago. 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. 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. 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. Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" Fatimah Asghar these are my people & I find them on the street & shadow through any wild all wild my people my people a dance of strangers in my blood the old woman's sari dissolving to wind bindi a new moon on her forehead I claim her my kin & sew the star of her to my breast the toddler dangling from stroller hair a fountain of dandelion seed These inheritances seep from country to country, body to body, and word to word, generating animosity and division. 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. Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. It also runs through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a supposedly shared ancestral origin. Thank you for your support. 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. Blend of Old World endurance and new World bravado their nature: what America does men!, or the people, whose homes, languages, and performer fatimah Asghar &! & amp ; no one knew why to strangers in my blood has change. To men another major theme in her Poetry Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, will. 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