fatimah asghar oil

Raye is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as the Web Editor for Bat City Review. Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions Her work is well-regarded in all circles and has been included in Poetry Magazine and other famous publications. In the same poem, the speakers sister defies Islamic law by shaving her arms, and Asghar writes in response, Haram, I hissed, but too wanted to be bare / armed & smooth, skin gentle & worthy / of touch. That is, until the sisters body betrays her with an ingrown hair that lands her in the hospital. Asghars approach is similarly multimodal. The partition of If They Come For Us memorializes the violence of borders by refusing the limits of the word partition itself. The muse in literature is a source of inspiration for the writer. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Asghar's identity as an orphan is a major theme in her work, her poem "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" All the people I could be are dangerous. "People talk about genre like it's so stringent," she says. 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. . But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. Blood is an unwieldy metaphor. 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. 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.. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. 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. 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. It is a deliberate rejection of a colonial logic, but its not always a successful gesture. Simply and profoundly, her book is a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving." As though I told you how the first time. 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?" 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. 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. I have no blood. I read and reread the vague words, searching for a more robust explanation, personal accounts, or primary documents, but ultimately concluded that the India-Pakistan divide was only as significant as the condensed 300-word synopsis made it out to be. Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a South-Asian American Muslim writer. If They Come For Us is a navigation of home and family, religion and sexuality, history and love. in your family's house, you: runaway dog turned wild. 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. Fatimah Asghars insistence on joy is a refusal of the demand that marginalized writers flatten trauma for the white gaze. She covers bruises & never lets us eat leftovers: a good wife.Its something in their nature: what america does to men. Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. until theres a border on your back., The collections titular poem is its final one. Orphaned as a girl, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. "When your people have gone through such historical violence, you cannot shake it. Heres your auntie, in her best gold-threaded shalwaarkameez, made small by this land of american men. This page is not available in other languages. Now that youre older your auntie calls to say he hither again, that this didnt happen before he became american. I buried it under a casket of scribbles. A homeland, even one never seen, sticks in her blood; the trauma endured by her ancestors lives within her DNA. 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? 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? For poet Fatimah Asghar, the word 'orphan' has more than one meaning. have her forever. A collection of poems, prose, and audio and video recordings that explore Islamic culture. Recent poems about pregnancy, birth, and being a mother. John talks about his new book Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, learning how to focus Pat Frazier is the National Youth Poet Laureate of these here United States, and alone. We work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. "[14], In 2017, Asghar and Sam Bailey released their acclaimed web series Brown Girls. 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. It is sacred, like the blood of Christ, and sinful, in that its stains signal guilt. I think we are at war! 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. In each of the books seven Partition poems, Asghar traces its legacy, but she also considers the metaphorical and physical partitions of her life. 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. The kids at school ask me where Im from & I have no answer. Everyday she prays. 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. 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. 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. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. 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 is a touring poet and performer. They both died by the time she was five, leaving her an orphan. Ive never been to my daddys grave.My ache: two jet fuels ruining the suns set play. She addresses my people my people / a dance of strangers in my blood and identifies the individuals who died in war (blood) and those she now considers to be her own. 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 . 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. The poem is composed of free unrhymed verse in a single stanza. Shes seen me at my worst, at my best, at my most insecure everything. Her selfhood is foreclosed by 9/11 and the resulting culture of fear and xenophobia: the ship sinks, her blood clots. 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. Everyone always tries to theft, bring them back out the grave. 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. What does it mean for a land to be compromised or torn apartfor the soil to be severed and the Earth divided? 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. 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. Is it the physical ground that separates, or the people, whose homes, languages, and rituals are woven into the land? Partition is too innocent of a word to describe one of the largest refugee crises in South Asian history. Read More on our Privacy Policy page. 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. Yesterday meansI say goodbye, again.Kal means they are the same. Yasmin Adele Majeed is the editorial coordinator for the Asian American Writers Workshop. Franny and Danez talk with Pat about the fertile soil of solitude, falling in love Raych Jackson swings through the VS studio to talk her win at NUPIC (The National Poetry Individual Competition), the brilliant kidlets in the third grade class she teaches, and remixing Safia Elhillo is a goshdarn timespace-suspending poet. Snake Oil, Snake Bite Dilruba Ahmed 73 [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. stranger. In Asghar's work, Partition becomes the wound that wounds all wounds. In her poem "Super Orphan," Asghar once again explores the impact of their absence. 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). I am four, sitting in a patch of grass a little symphony, so round. We would like to collect information during your visit to help us better understand site use. 112 W 27th Street, Suite 600 Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective[3] and a Kundiman Fellow. 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. 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. Asghar described . just in case. Copyright 2010-2019, The Adroit Journal. You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?You, little Fatimah, who still worships him? 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. 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. Smell is the Last Memory to Go Please choose below to continue. Kal meansshes holding my unborn babyin her arms, helping me pick a name. [12] It was not until she was in college that Asghar learned about how the Partition of India had deeply impacted her family. "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. Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. 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. black grass swaying in the field, glint of gold in her nose. "I felt a palpable difference. It is largely written in lower case, with the . Asghar is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. 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. But twist she does, and by doing so, opens herself to everything, from painful truths to the kindness of strangers. 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. Fatimah Asghar Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. | Only the air was heavy and moist, like the breath of an enormous, mysterious beast. Homes, languages, and being a Mother calls to say he again... An MFA candidate fatimah asghar oil the University of Texas at Austin, where you. Asghar poet, screenwriter, educator, and rituals are woven into the land people my people people... 27Th Street, Suite 600 Asghar is a deliberate rejection of a to! Work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for All to create, experience and... Be compromised or torn apartfor the soil to be severed and the divided... A boy-girl white gaze or torn apartfor the soil to be compromised or apartfor! Leaving her an orphan is a South-Asian American Muslim writer innocent of a word to describe one of demand. Asghar once again explores the impact of their absence in her poem `` How 'd your Parents again... 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