After
reading Fatimah Asghar’s book of poetry I am feeling like I was given to. Her poetry
collection had so many beautiful moments, gems and glimpses of the inner
workings of her life which have so much to do with where she is from, and America,
and the social atmosphere that creates Americans. I found it interesting in the
poem WWE where she talked about a
male figure in her life and she said: it’s America. Because he was never
beating women before that. It had me think about how the toxic heteropatriarchy
that structures America is also toxic for men, making them believe maybe even
encouraging a lot to act out in violence because violence is also so closely
connected to the American way.
Asghar also speaks about what I
interpreted as a non-binary sense of self in the poem entitled boy. I like how the poem revealed itself.
At first, I was thinking that this boy was another person but by the end of the
poem, we understand that the boy she is referring to is the boy inside of her.
The masculinity inside of her came out to protect her when she needed it to. I
liked this attention to the energies inside of her that she recognizes. I think
a part of being human is embracing both the feminine and masculine sides that
are inside of us. There is a fullness in the poem that gave me so much.
Asghar also talks a lot about
ecologies in her poems. In the poem Partition
on pages 23 she talks says:
1947:
In the fall
the
birds fly south for safety
to
hide from the cold.
1947:
in fall my family flocks
South
to Pakistan for safety
To
hide from their neighbors.
I
really enjoyed the way that she places the partition in her book of poetry. In
this poem she symbolizes land, animals and human family and there is a certain
connection there. The partition poems were a focus point, it was a rough time
in history for her people that they are still healing from and she is making
it, as an orphan in America. When Asghar tells us that she is an orphan in the
poem Super Orphan, real tears almost
sprang to my face because she has reclaimed that section of her identity,
writing about it seemed to put it to bed for this reader. And Isn’t that what a
superhero is? A person given such a daunting task and overcoming it through
strength of character, through physical strength, through knowing their own
body, and understanding who they are in a land that is not their own.
I also loved the reclamation of 'orphan' as a power, since a lot of superheroes are immigrants and orphans, and have to reckon with their origin stories and identities in a strange land, where they are made strange. I also like how this poem plays with inventing an 'alter-ego', or re-casting yourself, when the only history you have is collage. Donning a cape and jumping into the sky, to say "I am here!" transforms what makes her a stranger in a strange land into something powerful. She becomes someone to be accepted, someone to be loved, like Superman or Batman are.
ReplyDeleteClearly, the men, American and those who come to America perform in ways that make everything WWE—even politically. I also gravitated to Super Orphan because the trope is so troubling that “orphans “ need to give them selves power not to be disgraced.
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