Study If They Come For Us Formulated By Fatimah Asghar Accessible As EPub
on If They Come for Us
is raw, brutally honest, and makes you uncomfortable, As it should. sitelink
Content Warning: Genocide, Rape, Domestic Abuse
Well written, hard hitting, these poems put me through a roller coaster of emotions.
The author explains how she has existed in a world pulled towards conflicting loyalties, Partition was the division of India into India and Pakistan, it caused at leastmillion to forcefully migrate to escape ethnic cleansings and retributive genocides.
During this time,to,women were abducted and raped, The author explores the effects of Partition as well as how it has shaped her identity, She is from nations that America has villianized and her oppression is described in a multitude of ways.
The topics of poems range from descriptions of the Partition to exploring her racism, gender norms, family and sexuality.
Besides the serious topics some poems focused on funny ways that the author has assimilated,
"land that mispronounces my grief land that skins my other land that laughs when my people die amp paints targets on my future children's faces land that steals and says mine.
"
The social commentary included descriptions of what America stands for and how it's hypocrisy infects our ability to exist.
The author had poems in the form of crossword puzzles clues, grids of meaning and upside down paragraphs.
The different formatting worked well and helped me to stay engaged, The author struggles to balance viewing her comfort in America as a betrayal to her past, . I emotionally connected with feelings of being pulled by multiple identities but never finding solace in one, I'm still thinking on the intimate ways the author comes to terms with her life and I will be reeling from reading it for a long time.
We know this from our nests
the bad men wanting to end us.
Every Year
we call them something new:
British, Sikhs. Hindus. Indians. Americans. Terrorists.
Recommended for Readers who
enjoy poetry about identity and belonging
can deal with reading about genocide and death
want to reflect on how marginalized communities exist in America I think I believe in freedom I just don't know where it is.
I think I believe in home, I just don't know where to look,
Deeply disturbing yet incandescent, One of the reasons why Goodreads remains vital for me personally, Despite the bugs, the trolls and the ads, Poems about Partition and its lifelong effects on family and identity, growing up in America with brown skin, and more.
Ashgar dedicates specific poems to Nikki Giovani, Danez Smith, and Safia Elhillo I find her to be in good company with these poets.
Highly recommended!
Until it comes out, you can see a bit of her approach and tone in a performance of sitelinkPluto Shits on the Universe.
The poet is the writer and cocreator of the web series sitelinkBrown Girls, which I can also recommend.
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to this title that comes out August, “I am an architect, I permission everything into something new, I build amp build amp someone takes it away“ cousins partitioned from cousins,
mothers partitioned from child,
neighbors spearing neighbors,
women, virgins, jumping into wells
so full with people they cant
find water to drown.
This book is about so many things the partition, Kashmir,/, racism, identity, feminism, terrorism, immigration.
Fatima Asghar, a PakistaniAmerican poet here writes about her love and longing for Pakistan and Kashmir, The parents she lost, the culture she never got to own, the language that never became her native, the identity she searched for, the racism and judgement she was subjected to after/and how she feels for the children and women who died at wars, died in terror attacks, died in Kashmir.
I love how she writes about thepartition of the subcontinent, We are told that the partition was necessarily, it saved us, gave us identity but not about the violence, the rapes, the murders and the hatred that is still buried in our roots.
Asghar doesn't hold her pen while she writes poem after poem about how gruesome and horrific the partition actually was.
Also, her poems about Kashmir reflect how the world is indifferent to Kashmiris dying everyday as she wrote, "everyone wants Kashmir but no one wants Kashmiris"
And then there are poems about her identity crisis which I think evey Muslim immigrant will feel close to home.
“From the moment our babies are born are we meant to lower them into the ground To dress them in white They send flowers before guns, thorns plucked from stem.
Every year I manage to live on this earth I collect more questions than answers, ”
RWLChallenge: A poetry collection written or edited by an LGBTQIA person of colour,
Full review forthcoming via Rebel Women Lit I loved the concept at which these poems were written and since I listened to this as an audiobook, it felt like I was listening to a spoken word.
. neighbors spearing neighbors,
women, virgins, jumping into wells
so full with people they can't
find water to drown.
Poetry is not my jam, usually, but I picked this up as part of the month long May AsianReadathon.
This poetry collection is an exploration of both the trauma that is the India/Pakistan partition, and being an orphaned PakistaniAmerican queer Muslim growing up in the United States.
Some of these resonated better than
others, and I really appreciated the themes explored, The writing is raw and often compelling, and I will read more of her work,
I loved these poems, Powerful. Smart. Funny. An exploration of the past and current moment, Asghar is bold and confident in her exploration of self and identity, Referential and based in story telling, Really great! Poet and cocreator of the Emmynominated web series "Brown Girls" captures the experience of being a Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America, while exploring identity, violence, and healing.
In this powerful and imaginative debut poetry collection, Fatimah Asghar nakedly captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in America by braiding together personal and marginalized people's histories.
After being orphaned as a young girl, Asghar grapples with comingofage as a woman without the guidance of a mother, questions of sexuality and race, and navigating a world that put a target on her back.
Asghar's poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests in our relationships with friends and family, and in our own understanding of identity.
Using experimental forms and a mix of lyrical and brash language, Asghar confronts her own understanding of identity and place and belonging.
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Fatimah Asghar