Hijra

by Hala Alyan

In her third poetry collection, Hijra , Hala Alyan creates poems of migration and flight reflecting and bearing witness to the haunting particulars in her transnational journey as well as those of her mother, her aunts, and the female ancestors in Gaza and Syria.
 
The reader sees war, diaspora, and immigration, and hears the marginalized voices of women of color. The poems use lyrical diction and striking imagery to evoke the weight of an emotional and visceral journey. They grow and build in length and form, reflecting the gains the women in the poems make in re-creating selfhood through endurance and strength.
 
In prose, narrative, and confessional-style poems, Alyan reflects on how physical space is refashioned, transmitted, and remembered. Her voice is distinct, fresh, relevant, and welcoming.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

84 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2016

About the author

Hala Alyan was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and grew up in Kuwait, Oklahoma, Texas, Maine, and Lebanon. She earned a BA from the American University of Beirut and an MA from Columbia University. While completing her doctorate in clinical psychology from Rutgers University, she specialized in trauma and addiction work with various populations.

Her memoir, I'll Tell You When I'm Home is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in June 2025.

She has published two novels, her debut Salt Houses (2017), is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and her second novel, The Arsonists' City (2021).

Alyan's poetry collections include Atrium (2012), winner of the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry; Four Cities (2015); Hijra (2016), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry; The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019); and The Moon That Turns You Back (2024).

She co-edited the poetry anthology We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage (2023) with poet Zeina Hashem Beck.

Alyan has also been awarded a Lannan Foundation fellowship and her poems have appeared in numerous journals and literary magazines including The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, Guernica, Jewish Currents,The New York Times Book Review, Prairie Schooner and Colorado Review.

Alyan is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU. She resides in Brooklyn with her family.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in one day, and it's a book I'll return to. It's hypnotic and visceral in its images, an incantation of marginalized women's voices in exile and in war, a praise song to brutalized resilience. I'm so enamored with this book that I feel dizzy and drunk on it.

[el · Rating 3 out of 5]

gorgeous, though not my favorite from hala alyan (particularly the uniformity in length/layout of poems in the first half), but that's understandable given i've started with her newest books and wended my way backwards through time.

—

The mothers march parades through the cemetery. / Joy is for the afterlife, they say, / and drape the headstones with myrrh and lace. / The keys hang between the breasts of our daughters now. / They palm cigarettes and speak of revolution. / We tell them the prophets have been dead for ages, / the flags crumbled in the riots.

[Nour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words can't express my gratitude for poets like Hala Alyan. Hijra is phenomenal in every which way. As soon as one turns to the first page, one's back straightens, and breath expands into limbs with every turn. Through Hala's poems I have learnt that there is love even in melancholy.

[Anatoly Molotkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...when dawn/ carves itself on trees,// it's enough to make you/tunnel across the sea,// the thousands who died/ smelling apples in the air." Hala Alyan's collection is a dark, reverential study of violence and oppression, and the woman's place between tradition and modernity, home and emigration.

[Colleen Samura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure that I've ever read such an evocative collection of contemporary poetry. It was powerful and profound in every way imaginable, with haunting and visceral imagery that transported me across oceans to war torn homelands and made me humbly appreciate the sacrifices of women. I will definitely be looking for more from this author.

[Judy Borenin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyrical stories of the displaced - the migrant - visionaries of places that once were and are now destroyed - the remnants who survive - these are stories of women who have seen things that ring now in their blood - siren their veins.
"We emerge from the dawn like jinn'
catch wind and drizzle with aluminum bowls...

A thousand empty hands.

The children clasp at each living thing-
beetles and crunchy moth wings.

They suck the dirty ice." from Meals

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems are absolutely beautiful, however they all feel a little similar until part four, where structure, narrative, and imagery changes really allow the collection to blossom into a life of its own.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The keys hang between the breasts of our daughters now.
They palm cigarettes and speak of revolution."

[ʍ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept the stones you left me. You've no idea what a temple I built.

[Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I continue my read through of Hala Alyan's works, I think this might be my favorite of her poetry collections so far. The guiding theme was so clear throughout this story and these poems seemed at times almost to play off of each other; there was just a cohesiveness that I really enjoyed. There were many poems where I tabbed and annotated my thoughts and it's one I can certainly see myself returning to and finding even more to enjoy.