Description
About the Author
Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. They have been featured in various outlets such as TIME, NPR, Teen Vogue and the Forbes '30 Under 30' list. Their first book of poems If They Come For Us explored themes of orphaning, family, the violence of the 1947 Partition of South Asia, the legacy of colonization, borders, shifting identity, and violence. Along with Safia Elhillo they co-edited an anthology for Muslim people who are also women, trans, gender non-conforming and/ or queer, Halal If You Hear Me, which was built around the radical idea that there are as many ways of being Muslim as there are Muslim people in the world. They are the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendship among women of colour that was in a development deal with HBO, and wrote and directed Got Game, a short film that follows a queer South Asian Muslim woman trying to navigate a kink party after being single. They are also a writer and co-producer on Ms. Marvel on Disney +.
Reviews
In forms both traditional...and unorthodox...Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed or flexible. Most vivid and revelatory are pieces such as 'Boy,' whose perspicacious turns and irreverent idiom conjure the rich, jagged textures of a childhood shadowed by loss. - New YorkerFatimah Asghar's debut collection brought me to tears many times over. It is urgent, compelling and filled with fragments of history that have changed the face of the world. Its exploration of queerness, grief, Muslim identity, partition and being a woman of colour in a white supremacist world make this the most essential collection of poems you'll read this year - Nikesh ShuklaWhat an outstanding collection of poetry . . . [I] will be thinking about these poems for a long time to come - GoodreadsA stunning work of art that tackles place, race, sexuality and violence. These poems - both personal and historical, both celebratory and aggrieved - are unquestionably powerful in a way that would doubtless make both Gwendolyn Brooks and Harriet Monroe proud. - Chicago Review of BooksIn this awe-inspiring debut, Asghar, writer of the Emmy-nominated web series "Brown Girls," explores the painful, sometimes psychologically debilitating journey of establishing her identity as a queer brown woman within the confines of white America . . . Honest, personal, and intimate without being insular or myopic, Asghar's collection reveals a sense of strength and hope found in identity and cultural history. - Publishers Weekly *starred review*If They Come For Us is a beautiful book of poems that, as powerfully and deeply as any book I've read in a good while, wonders about, explores and laments our many inheritances of violence, which are also inheritances of sorrow, and the ways those inheritances reside in our bodies and imaginations. The ways those inheritances, in fact, structure our bodies and imaginations. And yet, the wonder of this book is the way that throughout the anguish and sorrow and rage, despite it, there is tenderness.
Book Information
ISBN 9781472154620
Author Fatimah Asghar
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Corsair
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 120g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 125mm * 11mm