If They Come for Us

I'm not one for poetry, so I didn't even know about this post Fatimah and just discovered the book while randomly browsing. But I was totally blown away by how much I loved it. Fatimah touches on many themes like loss of parents and home and culture, dysphoria, patriarchy, 9/11 and the aftermath of that as experienced by an American Muslim and many more, and each and every poem was very moving and hard hitting. But the ones that immediately touched my heart were the ones about the India-Pakistan partition : about the absolute devastation of what happened, the generational trauma it caused, and that hatred it gave birth to which lives on until today. Me and the author might be on the opposite sides of the partition line but the feelings and sentiments described in these poems felt very personal and I'm sure anyone from the two countries would feel the same. I'm deeply impressed by this collection and I definitely hope anyone who wants to checkout more South Asian works picks this up.

Some of the poems were very powerful and created a strong sense of place, action, and emotion. Others seemed to not fit next to the one before it, but isn't that the way out brains work? One thing should not connect to the next, but in our head they do. I do think I would have enjoyed this more if I was aware of the poet's work before this.

I never go out of my way to read poetry, but I needed a really short audio book to listen to today while I waited for my next one to become available.
This was awesome. I always appreciate it when the author reads their own work (if they have a nice voice). I loved the poems that were autobiographical in feel, especially those about her family and their relationships. I'd love to read a memoir!