Reading this collection of poems, was more than that, more than eye to word, it felt like a nostalgic and grieving connection for me. Fatimah Ashgar’s language of land, loss and historical trauma was something that felt very close to home to me. Her poems about the effects of partition and historical violence were familiar whether I knew what weight in grief the book held. My father was part of a the Navajo-hopi land dispute which took Diné folks off their land and relocated them taking away their homes and livestock. Which to many non-western folks land is life, there is no separation. It’s like tearing a child away from their mother. In result an endless amount of historical trauma, grief and pain has occurred due to this government intervention.This is an event that still haunts my father and the language I hear from Fatimah in this book is very similar.
In an interview I watched online she stated ”There’s a lot of sadness in this book but sadness is important.” In which I agree, these are unresolved feelings of grief, historical trauma and loss Fatimah writes about. In her last poem of the book, “If they should come for us,” she writes
“these are my people & I find
them on the street & shadow
through any wild all wild
my people my people
a dance of strangers in my blood”
A dance of strangers in my blood…oof, that line is heartbreaking, empowering and nostalgic all at once. Also it is a sense of longing, a sense of separation of what is not. She says “strangers,” due to the Partition of India she was torn from her land and blood because it is her people but yet they are strangers because she lives in a country separate from her culture and land.
Another poem that stood out to me was, Game of thrones:
“If we’re talking
about dreams then let me be honest.
I call for my family each night
in this borrowed tongue, in this language
not mine but which I wield daily.
Where is my blood-memory? Why
can’t my stone eggs hatch once touched?
Am I not my own kind of magic?”
I love that word blood-memory, family memory. The language in that question goes back to a longing of family, a longing of her mother tongue’s language and the consequences of loss. Her words are the heartbreak of the consequences of loss. And like she says, “Put me back
in a time where I could fight.
When fighting was more than poring
over books, trying to teach myself
the ghost of my mother’s tongue
from youtube videos.”
Powerful. Through these words you hear the anguish of loss and unresolved grief but as violent as the world is, I hope through the writing process Fatimah was able to find some kind of grief and hope.
Amber,
ReplyDeleteI think your connection to your own family/community and the pain around the stripping of language and historical trauma's Indigenous persons have been subjected to is clear and important. You capture well the gripping reality of this "sadness" Asghar writes into the pages of this book.
I find it interesting that so often we talk about the anger that comes from holding a marginalized identity. I think of the long tradition of women of color discussing and utilizing their anger to expose systems of oppression. But, as Asghar demonstrates, saddness is just as powerful. Thanks for sharing!
xoxo,
Rai
Amber,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. The phrases "blood memory, "family memory" and "charity child" stood out like adore thumb. I think Asghar does an excellent job at facilitating language to express ancestral loss and on-going mourning of deaths and loss of land. Her books feels as if she if trying to recover a history that she was never explicitly taught about, but something that she constantly feels in her bones. A cellular memory that is begging reveal itself. Very interesting.
Thank you for reminding us how much the land is a part of the story Asghar is weaving. How the people are not separate from their land, and yet how colonialism/imperialism is an attempt to do just that: sever people from their connections to the land that is so much a part of their bodies. Your post helped me see how Asghar's collection is a kind of mourning - a longing to return to that place of connection. Because the feeling of strangeness, from her family, from her people, from her own tongue, is devastating.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing about your own experiences so beautifully.
xoxo,
Arya
I agree with your colleagues here —you have a deep connection to this kind of loss and the whole thing about Kashmir is the land. I’m not quite sure we keep that connection as we focus on her identity and mis-identity. Here is where you had me: Her words are the heartbreak of the consequences of loss.
ReplyDeleteE
Ase. I also appreciate the way Fatimah's work creates room for the grievance of said land, loss, + historical trauma. I also think the way these partitions extend across cultures and the way this work can help make room for that grappling with that pain is so important. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the personal reflection. "What is land but land?/ a camp but a camp? Sanctuary/ but a grave?"
ReplyDeletewhat happens to our knowledge of self when ancestral land is traded for a substitute? how do we hold on to our stories of where we come from and a path to the future without these spaces?