We work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. 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. She smiles as guilty as a bride without blood, her loveof this new country, cold snow & naked american men. until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. 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. If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. Fatimah Asghar, writer and filmmaker Naomi Joshi Writer, artist, and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar refuses to be defined by genre. I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. in your family's house, you: runaway dog turned wild. 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? 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. 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. Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038, my people I follow you like constellations. Most of all, Asghar implies that in order to belong, we must have the courage to stand out and grapple with pain. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. After great pain. 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. 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. If They Come For Us leaves readers with fear and uncertainty of a nation that has become arduous and burdensome for immigrants. This data is anonymized, and will not be used for marketing purposes. As though I told you how the first time. Poetry However, she then describes how Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship / out on the map. I buried it under a casket of scribbles. 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. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. 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 In Asghar's work, Partition becomes the wound that wounds all wounds. All the people I could be are dangerous. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. In a later poem titled Oil, Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. The two main characters are a queer Pakistani-American writer and an African-American musician and are played by Nabila Hossain and Sonia Denis respectively. She has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, Kweli Journal, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. Her parents immigrated to the United States. have her forever. A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. The poem is composed of free unrhymed verse in a single stanza. This page is not available in other languages. 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? Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. 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. Even now, you dont get it. 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. Used with the permission of the poet. Back of the throatto teeth. Asghar in a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim-American author, creator, poet, screenwriter and educator who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By Fatimah Asghar. In Schizophrene, Kapil tackles the problem of representation by writing towards lacunae. A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. Asghars approach is similarly multimodal. 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. If They Come For Us ends with an honest declaration of love and appreciationloyalty and unwavering commitmentto the many communities she wholeheartedly identifies with: my country is made / in my peoples image / if they come for you they / come for me too in the dead. Paying homage to all her familywhether they be blood relatives or friendsAsghar celebrates the communities shes battled with, fought against, and finally embraced. Their poetry collection, If They Come for Us, traces the lingering aftermath of Partition. Main Na Bhoolunga. 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. 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. She covers bruises & never lets us eat leftovers: a good wife.Its something in their nature: what america does to men. your own auntie calls you ghareeb. "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. Then one day, their baba, their father dies, too. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. The death impacts a trio of siblings at the . Blood is a measure of perceived racial purity. Shes seen me at my worst, at my best, at my most insecure everything. 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. "I felt a palpable difference. She has also had her writing featured on outlets like PBS, NPR, and Teen Vogue. a little symphony, so round. In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. 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. Sign up for the Asian American Writers' Workshop Newsletter: Asian American Writers Workshop Their dirge, my every-mornings minaret. Stop living in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, demanding his dinner: american. Kalmeans I wake to her strange voice. 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 From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. 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. All the worlds earth is my mommas grave.The water droplet on the parks sunflower petal: her name.I kiss every stone & it becomes my fathers tomb: his grave.They said I was too young for the funerals, so I playeddress up at home. Fatimah Asghars insistence on joy is a refusal of the demand that marginalized writers flatten trauma for the white gaze. "[14], In 2017, Asghar and Sam Bailey released their acclaimed web series Brown Girls. Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. 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?" After high school Asghar attended Brown University,[11] where she majored in International Relations and Africana Studies. 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. If They Come For Us , by Fatimah Asghar (One World/Penguin Random House, 2018). 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. . The Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. 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. it makes of my mouth. [9] The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. 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. Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. 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. Elsewhere, a new history / Of touch, not pitted against the land. It is largely written in lower case, with the . Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. I learned that India had been split into two, with Hindus residing in Indian territories and Muslims living in Pakistan. 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. Copyright 2010-2019, The Adroit Journal. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. Read More on our Privacy Policy page. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. from a poisonous one. he was there toothe day on Bens couch, wearingmy skirt, ranking the girls, in class. togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. from the soil. Fatimah Asghar's brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Later in the poem, Asghar directly addresses death, stating, in all our family histories, one wrong / turn & then, death. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. It first appeared in Poetry Magazine in 2017. Family & # x27 ; s brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance new. 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