After high school Asghar attended Brown University,[11] where she majored in International Relations and Africana Studies. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. Let's ask Fatimah Asghar, the author of the. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. stranger. 112 W 27th Street, Suite 600 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. Used with the permission of the poet. 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. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. 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. Shes seen me at my worst, at my best, at my most insecure everything. Back of the throatto teeth. 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. like whenthat man held me down & we said no. Asghars approach is similarly multimodal. [15], "Often, our friends joke that we are each others life partners, or 'real wifeys.'" Every single person that visits Poem Analysis has helped contribute, so thank you for your support. 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. A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. This data is anonymized, and will not be used for marketing purposes. As a poet who has lived through layers of oppression and violenceof cultural hesitation and uncertaintyAsghar writes of the many communities she has found in America and the kindness and generosity buried in a nation plagued by marginalization. The poem begins with the 2014 terrorist attack on The Army Public School in Peshawar, forcing Ashghar to question whether we are meant to lower [our babies] into the ground / from the moment they are born. Asghars tone is pensive as she grapples with the notion of something as brutal and wrongful as death proximate to young individuals who have yet to understand what it means to be threatened. Her references to pop music, odes to her pussy, and jokes about microaggressions are purposefully incongruous, and with them she defies the gaze that Zhang and Mehri write about. "In. Simply and profoundly, her book is a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving." Her newest book "When We Were Sisters" was published October 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2022. 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). 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. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. Its estimated that 1-2 million people died and 75-100,000 women were abducted and raped in the ensuing months.) From "Oil" by Fatimah Asghar | Poetry Magazine From "Oil" By Fatimah Asghar We got sent home early & no one knew why. 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. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. 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). [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]. Raye is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as the Web Editor for Bat City Review. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. Jamila gets me through everything. As though I told you how the first time. "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 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?" The speakers feeling of un-belonging continues even at home, as she comes of age without the guidance of a mother and father. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. Their dirge, my every-mornings minaret. Our Mothers Fed Us Well Yasmin Belkhyr 70. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. 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. Request Permissions. The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. 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. Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038, my people I follow you like constellations. 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. But whenever its on you watchthem snarl like mad dogs in a cagethese american men. 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'. "People talk about genre like it's so stringent," she says. However, she then describes how Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship / out on the map. "I felt a palpable difference. "[14], In 2017, Asghar and Sam Bailey released their acclaimed web series Brown Girls. We would like to collect information during your visit to help us better understand site use. Give me my mother for no, other reason than I deserve her.If yesterday & tomorrow are the samepluck the flower of my mothers body. out on the map. Ive never been to my daddys grave.My ache: two jet fuels ruining the suns set play. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominatedBrown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. just in case. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. 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 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. I look up & make sure no one heard. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier and Good Fossil Fuels, Two scholars exchange letters on poetry and climate. [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. 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. 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. by pathmark. 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. 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. 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. With If They Come For Us Asghar joins a rich history of Partition literature. The muse in literature is a source of inspiration for the writer. my country is made / in my peoples image / if they come for you they / come for me too, she writes. have her forever. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. 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 from the soil. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. Smell is the Last Memory to Go Neither human sympathy nor nature's bounty can fill the void left by her parents' early . Fatimah Asghar is an award-winning poet, whose widespread collection of poetry, If They Come for Us, has created her international fame. Then one day, their baba, their father dies, too. Can't blame me for taking a good idea. It is sacred, like the blood of Christ, and sinful, in that its stains signal guilt. 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. Later in the poem, Asghar directly addresses death, stating, in all our family histories, one wrong / turn & then, death. like your little cousin who pops gum & wears bras now: a stranger. until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. . I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. 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. Sometimes, English needs to be broken, according to poet Fatimah Asghar. Kal. In Oil, she recalls losing her parents as a child and going to elementary school during the beginning of the War on Terror: Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. She covers bruises & never lets us eat leftovers: a good wife.Its something in their nature: what america does to men. It seemed peaceful enougheach group would have their separate homes. But Asghar recognizes the limits and violence of language. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR,Time,Teen Vogue,Huffington Post, and others. Even now, you dont get it. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. The 1947 partition of India and Pakistan is rarely addressed in American history textbooks and classes, much less in literature. just in case, I hear her say. 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. 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. And what is home if the place where you areboth in public and in privaterejects critical pieces of who you are? If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. How has climate change changed the way we write poetry? The towers fell two weeks, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them. But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. it makes of my mouth. 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. 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. 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,. Asghar in a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim-American author, creator, poet, screenwriter and educator who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I know you can bend time.I am merely asking for whatis mine. It is through you visiting Poem Analysis that we are able to contribute to charity. To transform lives pieces of who you are and in privaterejects critical pieces of who you are bruises & lets! Weeks, I know that words not meant for me too, she writes on news outlets as... 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