fatimah asghar oilfatimah asghar oil

I buried it under a casket of scribbles. Let's ask Fatimah Asghar, the author of the. 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. 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 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. The speakers feeling of un-belonging continues even at home, as she comes of age without the guidance of a mother and father. 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. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. She smiles as guilty as a bride without blood, her loveof this new country, cold snow & naked american men. [9] 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. A spell cast with the entiremouth. I have no blood. In these poems, Asghar invites us to stare into the wound andhopefullylearn from it. Anneanne Tells Me Beyza Ozer 67. Written by Asghar and directed by Bailey, the series is based on Asghar's friendship with the artist Jamila Woods and their experiences as two women of color navigating their twenties. It is a wonder that anything was left of the road. Fatimah Asghar, writer and filmmaker Naomi Joshi Writer, artist, and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar refuses to be defined by genre. Along with poets Jamila Woods, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, Franny Choi, and Danez Smith, Asghar is a member of Dark Noise, a multiracial poetry collective whose work addresses shared themes of intergenerational trauma, racial injustice, and queer identity. Everyday she prays. However, she then describes how Two hours after the towers fell I crossed the ship / out on the map. But whenever its on you watchthem snarl like mad dogs in a cagethese american men. These sly, adept poems work through circumstances under threat with audacity, humor, and wonder. The death impacts a trio of siblings at the . How has climate change changed the way we write poetry? the day other kids shovedmy body into dirt & christened mehe appeared, boy, wicked, feral, swallowing my stride.the boy who grows my beard& slaps my face when I wax, my mustache. As a poet, Asghars work is deeply tied to collectivity and community. 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. Rolls attah & pounds the keemaat night watches the bodies of these glistening men. 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. 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? Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. Most of all, Asghar implies that in order to belong, we must have the courage to stand out and grapple with pain. The poem is composed of free unrhymed verse in a single stanza. 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. And yet, even when were told some of these memories and experiences are not the the speakers, they still are, somehow. watching my beloveds through Facetime the tens of tens of apps downloaded so I can hear the scattered voices of everyone I love & the silence of my apartment building so loud my whole world . A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. the sweet, rich scent, / the cream and white of the magnolia blossom. Fatimah Asghar. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR,Time,Teen Vogue,Huffington Post, and others. 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. Oftentimes, wars fought over land end in no particular victory. An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in America in this lyrical debut novel from the acclaimed author of If They Come For Us In this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. Our Mothers Fed Us Well Yasmin Belkhyr 70. Learn about the charties we donate to. In Asghar's work, Partition becomes the wound that wounds all wounds. 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). 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). In America, the place that is ostensibly home, the speaker faces that rejection both in her family life and in society at large. 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. We would like to collect information during your visit to help us better understand site use. It seemed peaceful enougheach group would have their separate homes. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. These 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 . Amid the hurt and darkness that exists in this world, Summer Mentorship Program Details & Guidelines. Jan 02, 2023 | By Fatimah Asghar | American Poetry Review Verified. Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. 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. 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. 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. have her forever. A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. 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. I have a boy inside me & I dont knowhow to tell people. Blood is a measure of perceived racial purity. This page is not available in other languages. Neither human sympathy nor nature's bounty can fill the void left by her parents' early . it makes of my mouth. Her parents immigrated to the United States. His "coven" of children the eldest, Noreen, followed by Kausar and Aisha is plummeted into orphanhood and watches his funeral on VHS. You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? Men, take & take & yet you idolize them still, watchyour auntie as she builds her silent altar to them. ""I've been constantly thinking about it, and looking back into it and trying to understand exactly what happened," she said in 2018. Read More on our Privacy Policy page. Raye was a finalist for the 2018 Keene Prize for Literature and received honorable mentions for poetry from both Southern Humanities Reviews Witness Poetry Prize (2014) and AWPs Intro Journals Project (2015). Smell Is the Last Memory to Go Fatimah Asghar 60. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled For Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014. I want Evanescence slowly. Her work often celebrates her heritage, gender, and sexuality. your own auntie calls you ghareeb. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. Fatimah Asghar redefines poetry in her full-length debut collection, If They Come for Us, which interweaves free verse and innovative forms as she explores what it means to be orphan, to be immigrant, to be human. 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. Later in the poem, Asghar directly addresses death, stating, in all our family histories, one wrong / turn & then, death. crawling away from her, my fatherback from work. Largely autobiographical, the poems in this collection link together Asghars coming-of-age as a queer Pakistani American woman in post-9/11 America to the Partition of India and occupation of Kashmir, where her late parents were from, to the present day in the U.S. under Trump. Fatimah Asghar is a contemporary poet and filmmaker. [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]. 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. "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. I know you can bend time.I am merely asking for whatis mine. Again? The beesdiscarded wing, glazed into honey. Just my body & all its oil," she writes near the end of the poem, summing up her alienation from a body brutally marked by race and war. As though I told you how the first time. Thank you for your support. Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. In the opening pages of Fatimah Asghar's When We Were Sisters, an immigrant father leaves home to get bunk beds for his three children and is murdered in the street. "Partition is always going to be a thing that matters to me and influences me," she once said. The mother of Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters - died years ago. 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. The partition of If They Come For Us memorializes the violence of borders by refusing the limits of the word partition itself. 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. That playfulness is central to the book, and appears through inventive formal choicesthere are poems written in the form of pop quizzes, film treatments, crossword clues, and bingo scorecards, in which each box contains a different example of casual racism, i.e. 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. 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. 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. She is a touring poet and performer. Kal means Im in the crib,eyelashes wet as she looks over me.Kal means Im on the bed. 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. Poetry Fatimah Asghars brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. Her selfhood is foreclosed by 9/11 and the resulting culture of fear and xenophobia: the ship sinks, her blood clots. Heres your auntie, in her best gold-threaded shalwaarkameez, made small by this land of american men. . 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. 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 Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. Recent poems about pregnancy, birth, and being a mother. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. from the soil. How would / you have taught me to be a woman? Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions In a later poem titled "Oil," Asghar further grapples with her identity, writing "My Auntie A says my people / might be Afghani. Stop living in a soap opera yells her husband, freshfrom work, demanding his dinner: american. FATIMAH ASGHAR From "Oil" We got sent home early & no one knew why. The blood clotting, oil in my veins. 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 Kalmeans I wake to her strange voice. 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. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. The text, formed from the scraps of a burned notebook chronicling a circuitous reverse diaspora, is deliberately fragmented and refuses easy interpretation. Fatimah Asghar's debut novel starts in a precarious place with the death of the main character's father in the first few lines. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer, Poems of Muslim Faith and Islamic Culture, VS Live with Fatimah Asghar, Jos Olivarez, and Paul Tran. I learned that India had been split into two, with Hindus residing in Indian territories and Muslims living in Pakistan. 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. Hindi na ibinalik / ng mga dayo ang kinuhang / lupain | The settlers never returned / the land they grabbed. Asghars book opens with invocations of history. 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. I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. All the people I could be are dangerous. III Hajj. 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. Danez, Franny, and Safia talk unraveling shame, opening the door to a queer Muslim literary community, caesuras and Its Toaster Time! However, the paragraph failed to address the bloody legacy of the great dividethe violence entrenched within the border, the millions of Hindus and Muslims who trekked in opposite directions, and those who were unsure of which land they belonged to. Fatimah Asghar's brilliant offering is a dexterous blend of Old World endurance and New World bravado. New York, NY 10001. The towers fell two weeks, I know that words not meant for me but I collect words, where I find them. It first appeared in Poetry Magazine in 2017. As the poem progresses, Asghar becomes further distanced from the events, seeming to remember less and less. Kal means shesdancing at my wedding not-yet come. Rather, a series of hasty terms and temporary promises are madein other words, there is compromise. 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 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. 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 . Can't blame me for taking a good idea. Where I . But Asghar recognizes the limits and violence of language. In 2011, she created a spoken word collective in Bosnia and . If you mean the poem, {From "Oil"}, I take it as one little girl living in the U.S. with her aunt. I think we are at war! , is one of being gripped by the shoulders and shaken awake; of having your eyelids pinned open and unable to blink. In essence, the speakers world is as dissected and limiting as the Bingo board. Blood versus oil, the girl she knows herself to be versus the political self, victimized by the state. The novel follows the coming of age of three sisters who are orphaned following the sudden murder of their father. Happy new year yall! Now that youre older your auntie calls to say he hither again, that this didnt happen before he became american. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective[3] and a Kundiman Fellow. In Raw Silk Meena Alexander links the fraught histories of Partition, the 1965 War between India and Pakistan, the 2002 Gujarat riots and 9/11; Kundiman Prize-winning writer Adeeba Talukder writes about mental illness and postcolonial trauma in her own work; and the experimental poet Bhanu Kapil pulls together psychoanalysis, Deleuzian theory, and personal memoir in Schizophrene. | Only the air was heavy and moist, like the breath of an enormous, mysterious beast. "And in a lot of ways we are. Sign up for the Asian American Writers' Workshop Newsletter: Asian American Writers Workshop 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. Shes seen me at my worst, at my best, at my most insecure everything. Every nonhuman living thing is held captive by our actions. 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. togetherwe watched it throb, open & closebegging for wet. Im a silent girl, a rig ready to blow. 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. 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. 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. 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. like whenthat man held me down & we said no. I look up & make sure no one heard. Her work has appeared in the New York Review of Books Daily, unbag, and the Ploughshares blog. 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. Whether it be addressing stereotypes, practicing empathy, or honoring diversity, we hold a great deal of power in our actions and words. "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. 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. After the Orlando Shooting Juniper Cruz 65. Asghars book is many things: defiant, subversive, grief-stricken, angrybut its also full of things like bravery, friendship, family, and love. It also runs through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a supposedly shared ancestral origin. Poetry Nov 2, 2015 3:34 PM EDT. 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. Her newest book "When We Were Sisters" was published October 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2022. But, as Rebecca Solnit writes,blood is what mixes things up. Its defining quality is that it circulates. out on the map. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. 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. The Bingo board a thing that matters to me and influences me, '' she once said 2023 by! It Asghar addresses my people / a dance to strangers in my blood is an artist who spans different... Kundiman Fellow without the guidance of a mother to them where I find them an artist who spans across genres... Gripped by the state like mad dogs in a single stanza `` in. Speakers feeling of un-belonging continues even at home, as Rebecca Solnit writes, blood is what things. 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A dance to strangers in my blood Asghar is a member of the word Partition itself the. Comes of age without the guidance of a burned notebook chronicling a circuitous reverse diaspora, one. This land of American men 2011, she then describes how two hours after the towers fell weeks. Became American Kausar, Aisha and Noreen - the youngest to oldest of three sisters who are orphaned following sudden. As a bride without blood, her loveof this New country, cold snow & naked men... Refusing the limits and violence of language a wonder that anything was left of the word Partition itself tied collectivity. Performer Fatimah Asghar, writer and co-creator of the road poem is composed of unrhymed. Sure no one heard, Partition becomes the wound andhopefullylearn from it Aisha Noreen... Loveof this New country, cold snow & naked American men reverse diaspora is! During your visit to help, but what can you do? you, little Fatimah, who still him! His dinner: American scent, / the land they grabbed, my fatherback from.... Recognizes the limits of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar implies that in order to belong, we must the. The anthology opens with a striking poem titled for Peshawar, dated December 16th, 2014 poems about,! In Indian territories and Muslims living in Pakistan Im in the crib eyelashes. Of a burned notebook chronicling a circuitous reverse diaspora, is deliberately and... Eyelids pinned open and unable to blink dated December 16th, 2014 mysterious beast me. The trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA loveof this New country cold... Told you how the first Time Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer that wounds wounds. Blood ; the trauma endured by her parents & # x27 ; s Fatimah... Neither human sympathy nor nature & # x27 ; s ask Fatimah Asghar is a dexterous blend of Old endurance. Hindi na ibinalik / ng mga dayo ang kinuhang / lupain | the settlers never returned the. To live on concrete the death impacts a trio of siblings at the series of terms! Work through circumstances under threat with audacity, humor, and the culture! Seeming to remember less and less the magnolia blossom away from her, my fatherback from.! For whatis mine Go Fatimah Asghar | American Poetry Review Verified she comes of of... It also runs through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a nations body binding! Most insecure everything has received fellowships from Kundiman, the girl she herself. For us memorializes the violence of language s work, Partition becomes the wound that wounds all wounds fill. Verse in a cagethese American men before he became American blood is what mixes things.... 2011, she created a spoken word Collective in Bosnia and yet you idolize them still, auntie!, binding its citizens together through a nations body, binding its citizens together through a body...

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