Review: If They Come for Us

Rating: ★★★★★

Author: Fatimah Asghar

Title: If They Come for Us

ISBN: 9780525509783

Genre: Poetry

Publisher: One World, 2018

Page Count: 106 pages

Synopsis from Publisher: 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.

If They Come for Us is a difficult collection. Its difficulty is not a measure of the collection's aptitude at expressing intention and emotion in verse. What makes If They Come for Us difficult is the harsh realities Asghar reveals through imaginative form, imagery, and language play.

Much of what was written holds reflections of trauma, learnings, hopefulness, joy, and childhood/adulthood development during critical political climates and personal upheavals. Asghar explores how they come to understand themselves, their cultures, and where they belong—growing up before and after September 2001 in New York City; exploring modern, rebellious girlhood against familial and religious obligation; understanding one's body and selfhood as an adult in a land of hate, performative pandering, and earnest allyship. They mourn their marred childhood through images of joy, happiness, and rebellion. They cope with family lost, lands upended, and cultures reformed.

If They Come for Us' words flow freely, and you follow its melody easily, but the lyrics are anything but subtle or secure. Still, Asghar captures just what it means to grapple with the discomfort, pain, and outright trauma of growing up differently—separately—from others, and still finding moments of joy. Tinged as the vignettes are like burned paper, you step away hoping that that little girl grew up to find some semblance of peace and joy all along—all the while knowing it comes at a cost.