Description

From the author of The Arsonists’ City and The Twenty-Ninth Year, a new collection of Arab American poetry that traces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family—past, present, future—in the face of displacement and war.

A diaspora of memories runs through this lyrical poetry collection—a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time and poetic form—small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement.

These poems take stock of who and what can displace you from home and from your own body—and, conversely, the kind of resilience, tenacity, and love that can bring you back into yourself and into the context of past and future generations. Hala Alyan asks, What stops you from transforming into someone or something else? When you have lived a life in flux, how do you find rest?

Diaspora Literature: Tracing indelible paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem, these poems map a geography of memory and displacement. Poems about Identity: A profound exploration of what it means to be displaced from home and body, and the resilience it takes to find yourself again. Family and Memory: Examines the archives of family—past, present, and future—and the stories held in a multiplicity of voices and bodies. War and Geopolitics: Witness the blurring of boundaries, where small moments of daily life are interwoven with the stark realities of geopolitical brutalities.