If They Come For Us

In forms both traditional...and unorthodox...Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed or flexible. Most vivid and revelatory are pieces such as 'Boy,' whose perspicacious turns and irreverent idiom conjure the rich, jagged textures of a childhood shadowed by loss. - New YorkerFatimah Asghar's debut collection brought me to tears many times over. It is urgent, compelling and filled with fragments of history that have changed the face of the world. Its exploration of queerness, grief, Muslim identity, partition and being a woman of colour in a white supremacist world make this the most essential collection of poems you'll read this year - Nikesh ShuklaA stunning work of art that tackles place, race, sexuality and violence. These poems - both personal and historical, both celebratory and aggrieved - are unquestionably powerful in a way that would doubtless make both Gwendolyn Brooks and Harriet Monroe proud. - Chicago Review of BooksIn this awe-inspiring debut, Asghar, writer of the Emmy-nominated web series "Brown Girls," explores the painful, sometimes psychologically debilitating journey of establishing her identity as a queer brown woman within the confines of white America . . . Honest, personal, and intimate without being insular or myopic, Asghar's collection reveals a sense of strength and hope found in identity and cultural history. - Publishers Weekly *starred review*If They Come For Us is a beautiful book of poems that, as powerfully and deeply as any book I've read in a good while, wonders about, explores and laments our many inheritances of violence, which are also inheritances of sorrow, and the ways those inheritances reside in our bodies and imaginations. The ways those inheritances, in fact, structure our bodies and imaginations. And yet, the wonder of this book is the way that throughout the anguish and sorrow and rage, despite it, there is tenderness.I have never read a book that made me want to eat, write, revise and love my body as much as IF THEY COME FOR US by Fatimah Asghar. This book gutted, cradled, and inspired me. Asghar's work isn't simply some of the most innovative work I've read; page after page, the book weaves productive ambiguity, textured explorations of the body and lyrical precision into a work that is somehow just as much a mammoth book of short stories, an experimental novel, and a soulful memoir. I'm not sure this nation is deserving of such a marvelous sensual and sensory book, but I know we needed this. We so needed this.