“Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine is a profound work of grace and solidarity, rooted in a hard-earned understanding of colonialism’s insatiable appetite."

-- Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise

“The succinct starkness of Smokii Sumac’s offerings are an X-Ray to the grief and absurdity of our times. This dangerous dichotomy of trying to live one’s everyday life while holding the tragedy of everyday loss is profoundly captured in each stanza.”

-- Catherine Hernandez, author and screenwriter of Scarborough

“Creating room for collective grief, Smokii Sumac shows us the responsibility and power of the poet to face the blank page in the here and now and the necessity for words to remain as a testimony to history.”

-- Rayya Liebich, author of Min Hayati

“In both form and content, the poems shatter dominating linear and compartmentalizing interpretations of the world with constellating stanzas, voices, and experiences that reveal the intertwined histories and presents of colonial harm and Indigenous survivance."

-- Maral Aguilera-Moradipour, assistant professor, Asian refugee literatures and cultures, SFU