Born Palestinian, Born Black

by Suheir Hammad

Poems examine the violence, racism, politics, and culture of the Middle East

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Race, Memoir, Middle East, Feminism, History

97 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Fatima E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

i would be interested in having a dialogue with hammad about the cultural property of language. the aave used throughout some of the poems seemed to me like a muddling and appropriation of a culture/oppression/generational trauma that one merely decides to identify with because of parrallels to ones own culture/oppression/generational trauma...
this was a source of discomfort.

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Home is within me. I carry everyone and everything I am with me wherever I go. Use my history as the road in front of me, the land beneath me. Paths are many, but essence is one and eternal.
[...] The road I've traveled, the land beneath my feet. I make my own way home.
*
for these flowers & butterflies
these rivers & this soul
belong to this land
you cannot own them

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suheir Hammad is someone who crossed my path quite by accident in a bookstore in the mid-1990s. There I espied her book of poems, "Born Palestinian, Born Black." I glanced at some of the poems and liked their content.

Then several years elapsed before Suheir Hammad came to the fore of consciousness again. And that was when I saw her on CSPAN as part of a forum. Now that I've just finished reading this book of poems, I feel that I have been witness to a conscious and prophetic voice speaking in clear and at times raw language of the struggles of oppressed peoples both here in the U.S. and in the Middle East. What Hammad expresses in this book, everyone needs to read and strive to understand.

There is one poem, in particular, in this book that deeply resonated with me. Its title is "Manifest Destiny", a term I first learned of as a child more than 40 years ago. (But did not come to fully comprehend til I began seriously studying American history in high school. It is a title that defines the vision the U.S. had of itself in the 19th century as a nation with a messianic mission to establish itself as a continental nation spanning both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. "From sea to shining sea.")

Without further ado, here are the words from 'Manifest Destiny' that left their mark on me a short time ago:

"in a state of police
cops act as pigs treat men as dogs
mothers as whores
the bold youth of a nation hungry and cold
an entire nation of youth behind bars grown old
the mace and blood did not blind we
witness and demand a return to humanity

"we braid resistance through our hair
pierce justice through our ears
tattoo freedom onto our breasts

"we be political prisoners walking round semi-free
our very breath is a threat
to those we rather we not read
and think analyze watch out and fight back
and be human beings the way we need to be"

Seldom were truer words spoken, given the state of the world today on New Year's Day, 2019.

"BORN PALESTINIAN, BORN BLACK: The Gaza Suite" should be read and re-read by anyone concerned --- both in the mind and in praxis --- with the ongoing issues of life, justice, education, and freedom who believe that the world can be made better by humanity for the benefit of all life now and in the future.

[Jumie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The usage of aave and literal slurs that did not belong to Hammad bothered me immensely, taking me out of the text each instance. If not for this I would have loved this work. Will finish review later.

[RinTinTin]

I can't give a starred rating at the moment because I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, there were poems I really enjoyed (ex. argela remembrance, silence), and I certainly appreciate the historical connections between the Palestinian and Black American struggles that she evokes here (she also mentions Algeria, among other examples, and certainly there is precedent for solidarity here). However, to call herself black and to appropriate black culture and language felt a bridge too far (before I read the book, I thought that she was half Palestinian, half African-American, and that the duality of the collection would be about that type of mixed identity and experience, which is not the case). I think there would have been ways for her to draw parallels, and even to talk about the diasporic refugee experience as a Brooklynite, her connections through childhood to black culture and other communities, without appropriating other identities and experiences. I think that there are also other ways to make her point about power structures and blackness as a symbolic marker of communities relationships' to them that would have been more nuanced and compelling. I did come into this book with no context about the author and having not read nor heard any of her other work, only looking her up after reading it to try to contextualize my reaction to and questions about the text. These are my immediate, initial thoughts that of course could evolve with further reading or time.

[Mich · Rating 2 out of 5]

from the afterword:

“but what does Suheir Hammad mean when she says she is “born Black?” Black, in her case, not being mere ethnic marker but a political position in relation to a dominant power structure”

i strongly disagree with that part of the afterword as Hammad exploitatively uses aave, relies on Black American cultural markers and even uses the n-word to tell of Palestinian struggles and oppression. In many of her poems, Black is used solely as an ethnic marker and the usage of Black language and culture doesn’t succeed in creating a show of communal solidarity. i was uncomfortable ://

i like the poems best where an odd rendition of aave, Black cultural references and especially the n-word, are all absent. disappointed with this read after having first watched her in Salt of the Sea awhile ago :((

[Indran · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all, note that I'm no poetry expert, and I've noticed I tend to have a bias against poetry and non-fiction and in favor of fictional stories and novels.

That being said, a few of the poems were in 3 or 3.5-star territory, but generally I wasn't a fan. I felt that Hammad, Palestinian-American raised in Brooklyn, was quick to put on Black identity as a sort of costume, under the guise of solidarity. When she code switches back and forth between Black vernacular and so-called "standard" US English, it comes across as clumsy. There are other ways to express solidarity than for people who aren't on the receiving end of anti-Blackness to presume to have the right to define and be Black.

As a first generation immigrant, I get it: a sense of belonging can be hard to come by. But instead of exploring this sense of uprootedness, she takes a path that I see as less nuanced. A lot of the poems are charged with righteous indignation. Alliterations abound which, from the standpoint of a slam poetry performance, probably fit right in, but on the page they undercut the seriousness of the tone.

I agree with the critiques of settler colonialism, and Orientalist misogyny/fetishism. However, there is a part which seems to fantasize about defacing the Torah. If I understood that part correctly, then it completely undercuts the peacenik sentiments and activist culture she romanticizes and stylizes in other poems in this collection.

This is a work of clumsily expressed rage about forms of oppression which too many of us, myself included, are gracefully yet shamefully silent about. But I can't ignore the clumsiness in assigning a rating. I'll write more on this later.

I didn't understand 80% of the Gaza Suite: it consisted of lots of strings of nouns without a clear point.

The most honest and illuminating line in the collection:
"i want to remember what i've never lived"

Runners-up:
"there aint enough good feeling / to push the pain and awareness out"
"you got an / eject button / aint nothin like that down here"

[Doc. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggle to describe the pain that I felt while reading this collection not once, but twice.

First reading: November 2023, whereas most of the poems were written in the 90s; horrified once more at the history of rape and pillage that stretches farther back than October 7th. Another four thousand Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli Occupation Forces since then.
Second reading: January 2024, whereas most of Gaza’s poets have been killed/tortured by Israel; stunned with grief at the sheer brutality that we allow to perpetuate under the farce of self-defence. Another nine thousand and twenty-two (and counting) children have been killed since November.

With an economy of words and a vernacular full of rhythm, Suheir Hammad sings of the plight of the refugee in USA, in Lebanon, expelled and stateless. She writes a eulogy for the camp in Jabaliya that suffers a thousand deaths to this day. She tells us what it is to distract yourself into living life continents away, knowing that the accident of your place of birth is all that’s keeping you alive.
I want to say more, but my eyes well up and words fail me. Read Palestinian voices, more so because the world ignores them when it’s not destroying them. Heed their reminder to us, to allow ourselves to feel sorrow and yet know that to despair is a luxury:

“there aint enough good feeling
to push the pain and awareness out

not enough nothing to
make me forget

and I aint no
woman of steel
it feels needed this touch that
kiss there that rhythm
needed and wanted yeah now

hold me a little while longer
Just a bit just
a bit cause we
gotta get up soon
come on now baby
we got work to do”

[Q · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really expected to like this. I love the Suheir Hammad poems I've heard on Def Poetry Jam and TED. Her gorgeous delivery is definitely a factor, and maybe in part I just read too much work in this genre so my expectations are overblown, but I don't think it's just that - these poems seemed a bit same-ish, in content and tone, like one long righteous wail and I didn't love it. There are some standout lines (I'll go through it later to pick out my favourites) but as a whole I was disappointed.

[r.]

Language is power, politics. Words can be, as Piri Thomas says, bullets or butterflies. Labels can be empowering or threatening, self-defined or imposed. And in reality, even self-defined labels can be oppressive, limiting. We don't live in a stagnant world. My generation has seen many changes involving technology, environment, and ideology. Yet, with all the changes and upheavals, life basically stays the same. People love, hate, kill, and die. People sing, dance and write.

Why do I write? Cause I have to. Cause my voice, in all its dialects, has been silenced too long. Cause women are still abused as naturally as breath. Peoples are still without land. Slavery exists, hunger persists and mothers cry. My mother cries. Those are reasons enough, but there are so many more.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

In general, I really liked this collection by Suheir Hammad, who I generally admire a lot. I love how viscerally she evokes both Palestine and New York. She is unabashed, and I have usually loved her confrontational style; it is, after all, her intention to make us uncomfortable, and that intention is noble. So most of the book was filled with the type of poetry that you want to read and then put down so you can absorb it for a while. But in the middle of the book there is a poem - one stop (hebron revisited) - that crossed a line for me, in that it blurred concepts that should not be blurred, imagining physical violence against Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born Israeli settler and extremist who opened fire on Palestinian Muslims praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron during Ramadan in 1994, killing 29 people and injuring another 125. It's not her revenge fantasy about Goldstein that bothered me; he was a specific public figure, an emblem for those who support ethno-religious violence and he's dead and not in danger of being harmed by her writing. Writing is a mechanism by which she's dealing with her overwhelming emotion at his acts. But the imagery she uses in some parts of the poem would be so offensive to most Jews - and in fact, most Christians as well, as she invokes tired historical Christian tropes about Jews - in the way they play on historical narratives of ordinary Jews who are not massacring Muslim worshippers. It might be true that Hammad is getting at the idea of Israel forcing Jews to associate with its policies, but this poem doesn't seem to well support that possible critique. At any rate, otherwise I would have given this book 4 stars, but her sloppiness with her metaphors and imagery in that poem specifically, which doesn't give adequate consideration to the horrifically-iconic nature of such narratives, means I can't bring myself to do it. However, I don't want one poem to overshadow the importance of the other poems in the book, which are definitely brave and important to read. I would still recommend this book.

[Nema Al-Araby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suheir Hammad's poetry is beautiful. SHE is beautiful. Her soul. She has too many tender and delicate ideas that could make the world so much better. I wish I heard all these poems being recited, it would've been much much better with her great talent at writing and reciting together.
Suheir was one of the major reasons Palestine is always on my mind now. And it's ironic how a bleeding country inspires so much.
The only thing I didn't like in her poetry was her slang accent, I don't like slang in poetry nor do I like abbreviations, they somehow (on a personal level and view) degrade poetry and the inspiration it brings to the heart.
I'm definitely getting another book for her!

[Linzmars · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Suheir Hammad. She's one of the best poets...and one of the most inspiring. But her poems are better performed than just read. One needs to read a poem twice to catch the beauty and deepness of her writings. I found some of the poems quite amature as they were written back in the late 90s. But for those interested in poetry...it's a must read, and a must have.

[Kari]

Having trouble finding this one...

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, though having read fabulous Zaatardiva, I appreciate the maturity she grew into, both in content and style.

[samihah ★ · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/5 stars

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Born in Amman, Jordan to Palestinian refugees, Suheir Hammad was certainly born Palestinian in a literal sense. She and her family moved to Brooklyn, NY when she was five-years-old, in the late 1970s, and perhaps it was through her experience there that she learned she was also born Black -- not African or African American, but Black in a social, cultural and political sense; Black in a way that is loaded with meaning and open to interpretation.

Born Palestinian, Born Black was Hammad's first published collection of poetry. I may have never heard of it were it not mentioned in Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, The Message. The poems contained herein are poems about identity, finding oneself and being denied, about being sexualized and exoticized, about race and class, about dispossession. They are poems brimming with rage and sadness, joy and beauty. Her words are alive, a stirring call to the heart, a reminder of the interconnectedness of the struggles of all oppressed peoples.

[Zeina J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suheir Hammad is the first Palestinian poet I’ve read that truly inspired me, in a modern and feminine sense. Her poem “the necklace”, means so much to me; it’s personal.

[Jessica Racine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reread these poems again and again and probably will again. So raw so relevant, still. Essential reading

[Carmen Badea · Rating 5 out of 5]

“fascism is in fashion
but we be in style
[…]
fashion is passing
style is everlasting”

[Malyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Suheir Hammad’s Born Palestinian, Born Black is a deeply visceral collection of poetry that grapples with identity, trauma, and resistance. Drawing from her experiences as a Palestinian-American woman, Hammad weaves together narratives of oppression, liberation, and solidarity with other marginalized communities. It was particularly powerful reading “who place a baby’s health underneath vanity / those who trade wealth for our sanity” (32) after the recent events of United Health have revealed widespread disapproval of current health insurance practices. However, while the book undeniably captures the rawness of anger and grief, certain elements of the collection left me feeling deeply disturbed and conflicted.

Hammad’s skill as a poet is evident. The intersections she draws between Palestinian and Black struggles are thought-provoking, offering a perspective that ties disparate histories together under the banner of shared resistance. However, the parallels Hammad draws from her described "political Blackness" make me wonder if the connections are empowering, or if they risk oversimplifying distinct struggles and people. As others have shared, I was jarred by her use of AAVE, and even more so by her use of the N-word. While this collection was originally published in 1996, the broader cultural context around the use of AAVE and the N-word has evolved significantly. This shift further complicates Hammad’s appropriation and adoption of "political Blackness," raising questions about its appropriateness even at the time of publication.

Many other passages stood out to me as crossing a line from provocative to racist. In particular, her depictions of Jews and Jewish symbols often feel not mere critical of Zionism but actively hostile in a way that reinforces harmful stereotypes and fosters division. For instance, imagery like using a person's own Star of David to stab them in the gut, describing kosher practices in grotesque terms, mocking Jewish holidays by intentionally mis-writing the Hebrew names, felt gratuitous and alienating. This choice is particularly odd considering the shared linguistic roots of Arabic and Hebrew, with Paleo-Hebrew predating Arabic by centuries, underscoring the deep interconnectedness of these cultures. These moments overshadowed the broader themes of the work and left me questioning whether the anger expressed served to elucidate or to inflame.

Throughout the collection, Hammad implicates individual Jews—such as the “Brooklyn boy”—in the actions of the Israeli government, collapsing distinctions between personal identity and political systems. Lines like “woulda taken your rabid star of david / stabbed you in the gut / til your screams were heard bouncing / off the wailing wall” conflate symbols of Jewish faith with violence, reinforcing age-old antisemitic tropes. Invoking the Wailing Wall—a site of profound generational trauma and a symbol of resilience for the Jewish people—feels deliberately cruel, weaponizing a place of collective mourning against its own community. Additionally, her likening of Jews to rats, as in “fat zionist rat" eating a baby’s eyeball is particularly egregious, evoking centuries-old dehumanizing imagery historically used to justify persecution of Jewish people.

Additionally, the frequent tunnel imagery throughout the collection is reminiscent of narratives associated with “resistance” terrorist groups, further complicating the reader’s ability to separate poetic symbolism from real-world violence. Passages such as “a great miracle happened here / a festival of lights / a casting of lead upon children / their heads roll of their shoulders into streets” are devastating in their descriptions of suffering but risk alienating readers by framing Jewish holidays like Chanukah in terms of destruction and malice. The irony of this is Chanukah's origin came from Jewish resistance to assimilation and conversion under the Greeks, one of many times Jews suffered at the hands of violence that Hammad advocates for throughout the anthology.

Hammad’s incorporation of broader spiritual and cultural references—from Rastafari to Buddhism to Christianity—also excludes Judaism as a source of liberation, despite its historical ties to many of the practices she mentions. For example, her avoidance of mikveh while referencing its later Christian adaptation, baptism, feels like a deliberate circumvention that further marginalizes Jewish tradition. This omission could suggest a deliberate marginalization of Jewish tradition, or it may reflect a lack of understanding about its history and significance.

There is an undeniable power in Hammad’s voice, and I recognize that her work reflects the deep pain and generational trauma experienced by Palestinians. However, as a reader, I struggled to reconcile the human truths in her poetry with the violent and dehumanizing language directed toward others.

Ultimately, Born Palestinian, Born Black is a challenging read that may resonate differently depending on one’s background and perspective. It’s a book that forces confrontation with uncomfortable truths—both about the world and about the limits of artistic expression as a vehicle for healing or understanding. I admire the raw honesty of Hammad’s voice but find myself disturbed by the ways in which that honesty sometimes manifests. For those willing to engage critically with difficult texts, this collection has much to offer. But it’s not a book I can recommend without significant reservations.

Specific passages referenced:
“fat zionist rat” (26) [eating a baby’s eyeball]

“woulda reached into the conductor’s booth / grabbed an intifada stone and / crushed your skull” (33)

“woulda taken your rabid star of david / stabbed you in the gut / til your screams were heard bouncing / off the wailing wall / moses woulda heard you scream” (33)

“woulda grabbed that damn book that / entitles you to murder / cause you were favored / to destined to chosen to / claim my land” (33)..“woulda ripped the pages into a cross / crucified your ass / right there on church ave” (34)

“woulda waited til you were finished / with your evil ablutions / blasphemous prayers / and shot you right between the eyes / so i could watch you die” (34)

“cause it ain’t kosher / brooklyn boy / to kill the kneeling in prayer / aint kosher to cook the flesh of palestine / in ramadan blood / no it ain’t / kosher” (34)

“so you could sit down at your / pass-us-over cedar / ain’t kosher / brooklyn boy” (34) - is there a more astute example of willful misunderstanding, of ignorance here?

“we became each other’s / n--as and hoes” (53)

The speaker mentions Jah from Rastafari, Buddha, Osiris, Jehovah, and even “no communion / no baptism / no nile liberation” (60); and yet, baptism derives from mikveh, which seems to circumvent her avoidance of Judaism here.

“a great miracle happened here / a festival of lights / a casting of lead upon children / an army feasting on epiphany” (87) … “some must die because they are the vicinity / some must die because it is written” (88) … “a great miracle here / the living are dying and the dying living / a festival of lights / a strip a land ablaze / the sea a mirror of fire / a casting of lead upon children / their heads roll of their shoulders into streets / their tops spin in hands”

[theperksofbeingmarissa ;)]

I don't think I can rate this book given how bothered I was by the incorrect use of AAVE and cultural appropriation.

[Schwarzer_Elch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A través de sus poemas, Hammad transmite con acierto la voz de su pueblo, su historia nacional. Sus textos son poderosos, pues juegan con las simbologías, las miradas múltiples, las memorias colectivas. Saber lo que sucede en Gaza hoy en día es escalofriante, pero cuando tomo consciencia de que los abusos se realizan de manera sistemática desde hace décadas no puedo dejar de cuestionarme sobre nuestra humanidad. ¿Cómo hemos decidido mirar hacia otro lado por tanto tiempo?

[Vikki Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suheir Hammad is an upright voice for the dispossessed, in this collection Hammad offers us her world, it is raw, urban and it is powerful. She has the poetic voice of an activist, a feminist and a woman wounded by an unfair world. Her words are her strength against a struggle few of us know so intimately. For the time we spend within the pages of this book we have the honor of marching alongside Ms. Hammad as she confronts the voiceless atrocities that have moved her. This unique perspective in now over a decade old but Hammad’s youthful rendering remains entirely relevant in today’s state of affairs. She wields an openness; a vulnerable fierceness of pride and she doesn’t tread lightly. We are required to see the very images we all turn away from in order to see the depth of Hammad’s evocative humanity. To capture the true essence you must hear her read her poetry in person, she is a force to be acknowledged.

[Noel نوال · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We take your smoldering strength and
maternal love to throw as
stones at mercenaries
use your patience as shields in the nights
your womb our shelter
your heart where we bury our dead."
~Suheir Hammad 'Our mothers and their lives of suffer'

Once again Suheir's words have bewitched me body and soul. Her poems embody resistance, love, ancestral strength beating through blood in the hearts of descendants, home, and roots deeper than the olive trees of Palestine. What a beautiful first read of the new year.

[Ayesha Rizwan]

Truly heart breaking......
Eventhough some of the instances the writer's protagonist retaliates against the oppressors and acts as a opstacle in their way which would not be easily ridden. But in the end the pain is what stays faithful because in the end its always the same struggle, the struggle for land occupied by foreign invaders, a colonial tail of a "postcolonial" world.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read to see the style and work that preceded Breaking Poems which is another short, robust, and powerfully poignant collection. Suheir Hammad manages to bring queerness, blackness, Palestinian-ness altogether for a collection of poetry that predated intersectionality as a well-known fact by 20 years. Keep your eyes on Suheir Hammad--there's more brilliance yet.

[honey]

“did i turn your stomach?
least i didn't turn your insides to confetti with a u.s. made machete up your pussy
rape you with my machine gun down your throat
gun point your father to molest you in front of my army
prostitute your essence til you confess you were born phalestinian
confess you would die the way
you were born
free”

[Ya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met her before she became big and then I saw her live at Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam. She is an amazing poet with a quiet but powerful soul. This book brings together people of all backgrounds and lets us see how we really all are one.

[Edina Truth-Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

i wish i woulda,

woulda caught you on the train

on an empty car into flatbush



woulda reached into the conductor's booth

grabbed an intifada stone and

crushed your skull

to dig up your thoughts and

burn them up