Fatimah Asghar’s poetry is simply stunning in its rich language and sensory detail. She weaves a certain history that so many are unfamiliar with. I definitely gained a lot of cultural insight, being South Asian myself. Thank you, Ms. Asghar, for giving us a voice.

I have mixed feelings about this book. At times, it is beautiful and evocative, but at other times the poems drag. So much is covered, like issues of nationality and sexuality. When I finished the book, I instantly thought that re-reading it would probably help me unpack and enjoy the poems more. I'm happy that I read this book, but it just wasn't for me.

Timely and accessible, Fatimah Asghar’s collection of poetry “If They Come for Us” is just what I am craving right now to try and better understand the experiences of others and the world around me. Her poems immediately drew me in with vibrant language and raw emotion.

Fatimah Asghar's poetry in If They Come For Us is everything I hoped it would be. It was raw and powerful. Her words paint her world and pull on your emotions. Her verses gave me chills and left me breathless. I particularly fell in love with My Love For Nature.

This is a beautiful collection of poetry. I loved that it switched between historical and modern topics. Fatimah Asghar's writing is extremely powerful and does an excellent job of explaining a variety of topics ranging from relationships to being a Muslim in America to the partition of India.

I feel like I could read this collection of poems over and over and still be still be left speechless by how beautiful and well done it is.

This book was eye opening and I am glad I read it.. Diverse voices and subjects are so important to read and it helps me to learn more about people who have had different experiences than I have,

If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar

BROOKE’S REVIEW

Fatimah Asghar’s If They Come for Us is a brilliant debut collection of poetry exploring themes of sexuality and race. Asghar’s perspective as a young Pakistani Muslim woman in America is a fresh and needed voice in America today.

I particularly enjoyed her poems with a political edge and her bingo board on microagressions, but her more biographical and poems exploring femininity and sexuality will have a universal appeal. I only hope this collection gets the exposure it deserves. This is a book you can judge by its beautiful cover. It will be released August 7. 2018.

PRAISE

“In poems that are as historically aware as they are forward-thinking, Asghar reminds us with wit, wisdom, and compassion that a truly felt and thoughtfully written poem can be many things at once: a salve, an artifact, a puzzle, a flashlight in the face of imminent darkness, and even a whole home.”—Tarfia Faizullah, author of Registers of Illuminated Villages and Seam

AUTHOR

Fatimah Asghar is a nationally touring poet, performer, educator and writer. Her work has appeared in many journals, including POETRY Magazine, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets and many others. Her work has been featured on new outlets like PBS, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. In 2011 she created Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first Spoken Word Poetry group, REFLEKS, while on a Fulbright studying theater in post-genocidal countries. She is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. She is the writer of Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Currently she is an MFA candidate at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.

Many thanks to NetGalley and One World for providing me with a copy of this work in exchange for an unbiased review.

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Description:

Poet and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series "Brown Girls" captures the experience of being a Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America, while exploring identity, violence, and healing.

In this powerful and imaginative debut poetry collection, Fatimah Asghar nakedly captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in America by braiding together personal and marginalized people's histories. After being orphaned as a young girl, Asghar grapples with coming-of-age as a woman without the guidance of a mother, questions of sexuality and race, and navigating a world that put a target on her back. Asghar's 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 manifests in our relationships with friends and family, and in our own understanding of identity. Using experimental forms and a mix of lyrical and brash language, Asghar confronts her own understanding of identity and place and belonging.

Review:


Fatima Asghar is a poet on the rise and one you must read. Her words are like a good mango in the summer, juicy and flowing with greatness. If They Come For Us is incredible in the fact that it doesn’t mince its words. It tackles generational trauma, the power of female friendship, learning how to survive in a world that isn’t kind to brown girls... all with unflinching honesty and emotion that drips off its pages. It’s also a book about memory and who’s allowed to live long enough to remember the light (“Here’s the image Auntie P gave me: the street a pool of spilled light & all the neighborhood children at my grandfather’s knee,” How We Left: Film Treatment) and the dark (“My uncle gifts me his earliest memory: a parking lot full of corpses,” For Peshawar).
Asghar’s words are a punch in the gut, especially with lines such as:
“From the moment our babies are born are we meant to lower them into the ground?” For Peshawar
“The past is a land I do not know.” How We Left: Film Treatment
“I tried to learn Spanish so I could pretend I was the other kind of other.” The Last Summer of Innocence
“My love for nature is like my love for most things: fickle & theoretical. Too many bugs & I want a divorce. My love for the past is like my love for most things. I only feel it when I leave.” My Love for Nature
Each of Asghar’s pieces on Partition, be they constructed in the way she talks about her family, or in the historical process of the partitioning of India and Pakistan, are each a mark of the way such a moment has affected her throughout her life.

If They Come For Us is for certain the collection to cement Asghar as a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary poetry canon.

If They Come For Us comes out on August 7th.

An eARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

A beautiful and interesting look at first generation immigrants in America and subsequent alienation in two cultures.

The best word I can think of to describe this collection of poems is raw. The language is direct and, at times, gut punching. I found myself saying “wow” out loud while reading on more than one occasion.

I don’t usually read poetry that often because I find it monotonous after a while, but this collection made me rethink this. Between playing with traditional poetry forms and the direct, non-flowery language, this kept me on my toes.

While Asghar and I share no similarities in terms of culture, religion, or upbringing, there was something so engaging about her phrasing that I felt like I could relate to her words in a way. There are definitely poems in this collection that I will return to in the future. (or perhaps I will return to the full collection since it was such a quick, all-consuming read)

Thank you to Netgalley for sending me an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion:

These poems explore so many themes, such as identity (personal, cultural, sexual, gender), community, the immigrant experience, belonging, experiencing microaggressions, and the far-reaching impact of colonialism, as well as the effect of 9/11 on Muslim Americans. This collection evokes emotion and shares stories. I love the variety of form and the cadence of these poems, but most especially, I love Asghar's voice.

This book hit me like a ton of bricks and I loved every second of it. This poetry collection, especially now, is much needed. Fatimah’s story is raw, powerful and poignant covering their life from fleeing India to being Muslim in America. This collection is a must-read and I will be returning to this collection many times in the future.

Poetry so personal it is borderline memoir, threading diatribe poetics into those of confessionals, histories, and condemnations. Perfect fusion of rawness and refined lyricism, tightroping between abstraction and realism, thematically orbiting (and sometimes interweaving) issues of sexual and gender identity, western exceptionalism, American xenophobia, and the short-term memory of history. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and starts stronger than it finishes (tightening up the collection a tick would have helped), but every seeming lull is quickly roundhoused by yet another knockout poem. Bonus points: likely to feature the most perfect line of poetry from 2018:

...but I
live
in a country whose sun is war
we keep rotating around its
warmth
our faces, sun-kissed, each &
every morning.

-From "100 Words on 45's 100 Days"

As a Pakistani, these poems on Partition hit close to home. The writing is raw and open. I would probably be returning to this book every now and then.

It is a must read for anyone who loves poetry and wants insight into aspects of history of the sub-continent.

This powerful collection of poetry gutted me right open, as Fatimah Asghar delves into the brown American experience with precision and insight, interrogating the depth of its low points!

If They Come for Us is a book of poetry by a Pakistani Muslim woman about the ethnic cleansing in Pakistan, known as Partition. Don’t run from poetry this time, this is really good. Really. Good.

This is a gorgeously horrific volume of poetry that uses frank language with an edge, helping the reader understand how difficult this time was and continues to be as a person who is Muslim, an “other” and has a history of death and being a victim of violence.

"Microaggression Bingo" is brilliant. The author has cleverly used this as well as a Mad Libs format to show us how we treat the “other” in our society. Heartbreaking, humorous, and horrific, the backdrop to the author’s poetry is war and division. The theme is repetitive, namely misunderstanding or fearing another because their culture is different.

Asghar examines how hard it is to acclimate and uses such creative wordsmithery to create a thought provoking way to illuminate issues of race, bigotry, and war. "Land Where My Father Died," uses such imagery that cannot help but provoke thought about our values and human rights.

Timely and thoughtful, this will be an award winning volume of poetry. Every one should be required to read this and drink in it’s emotion.
Easily a five star book. Just buy it.

Thank you to the publisher and #NetGalley for a pre-publication ebook in exchange for an honest review.

If They Come for Us is a book of poetry written by a Pakistani Muslim woman. Partition is a common theme (and poem title) throughout.

The poems with non-traditional formats bear mentioning -- Fatimah Asghar has a poem entitled "Microaggression Bingo," after which follows the game board. There's a film treatment, even a crossword format. This is not to suggest the poems in this book are all playful and light-hearted. In fact, they can be edgy, with frank language as she examines issues related to sexuality and cultural expectations.

Asghar examines themes of what it is to (try to) acclimate, how it is to appear as an "other" in a new country as well as a stranger to your family, how to wrestle with a history of violence.

Several poems captured my attention with their creative wordplay and had me returning to them to soak them in longer. They included titles like "A Starless Sky is a Joy Too," "Land Where My Father Died," "National Geographic," "Look, I'm Not Good at Eating Chicken," "How'd Your Parents Die Again?", and "Super Orphan."

With lines like "It was the summer the TV told me I was dangerous & I tried to learn Spanish so I could pretend I was the other kind of other," it's no wonder the author has received acclaim for her work.

Fatimah Asghar's If They Come for Us is a raw, emotional, richly constructed poetic composition. Fatimah's moving and poignant poems bust open the hurt and scars left from the Partition of India. Fatimah offers her insight and experience of her ancestor's history, her lack of parental support/guidance, and questions of sexuality. Though at times uncomfortable, the reader connects to Fatimah's heart wrenching experiences of growing up with the scars of racial insensitivity, struggle and finding' one's place (and voice) in today's world.

I really liked this book pf poetry. The poems made me think and feel at the same time. I would definitely recommend this book, and I'm looking forward to reading more poems by Fatimah Asghar

Asghar’s poetry is a deeply felt glimpse into the effects of political and racial conflict that span many years and countries. *If They Come for Us* tackles the devastating consequences of colonization in South Asia, specifically the violent partition of British India that uprooted millions of natives into the independent nations of Pakistan and India. Asghar writes from the perspective of a young woman who is navigating her identity amidst the racial turmoil and Islamaphobia of growing up in America. She presents a perspective in which many South Asians are grappling with the inherited traumas of Partition, immigration, and becoming refugees—as well as the burden of clashing cultures and what it means to be a young Muslim woman in America—while growing up in the West and dealing with racial prejudices in a land that can sometimes feel both exciting & discriminatory.