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Postcolonial Banter
Postcolonial Banter is Suhaiymah Manzoo-Khan’s debut collection. It features some of her most well-known and widely performed poems as well as some never-seen-before material. Her words are a disruption of comfort, a call to action, a redistribution of knowledge and an outpouring of dissent. Whilst enraged and devastated by the world she finds herself in, in many ways it is also the mundane; hence, whilst political and complex in nature, her poetry is just the ‘banter’ of everyday life for her and others like her. Ranging from critiquing the function of the nation-state and rejecting secularist visions of identity, to reflecting on the difficulty of writing and penning responses to conversations she wishes she’d had; Suhaiymah’s debut collection is ready and raring to enter the world.
143 pages, Paperback
First published September 19, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
September 17, 2019
There is nothing banterish about this collection of poems by @thebrownhijabi. In itself, the evocation of ‘banter’ in the title of her debut solo book conceals the forensic and incisive social commentary that we are treated to throughout each poem – perhaps speaking to how this young poet sees her own early progression in the world – her wisdom being masked by self-deprecation. This isn’t just a book of ‘fire poetry’, this work must be considered an education beyond the immediate artistry of her verse.
Even the dark humour that permeates the pages of the collection cannot be reduced to banter, the acerbic wit has a constant feeling of poignancy. You get a real sense of this from the titles, and the oft-accompanying subtitles that so readily capture Suhaiymah’s lack of reticence in discomforting the reader. ‘STRADDLING THE / LINE you’ll know if it’s for you’ - there isn’t any hiding, as the poetry address typologies of abuse. The reader is forced to confront themselves by the notion that they may well be the subject of the poem’s content. This immediately makes the target of her critique both simultaneously knowable and unknowable - a difficult thing to achieve. We are treated to a form of critique that is generalised to become advice, and not specified to embarrass - and just like the best of the Prophet Muhammad’s (saws) advice, it was given to make people consider its implications in their own lives.
Another example of this comes in ‘PICK ONE for the woman who asked’ “Muslim, Feminist, or Human?” (p.90). The unnamed woman who asked this question is provided a response, and while she is not named, her name is meaningless because Suhaiymah’s response is never a personal attack, it’s a moment of critique and education. Even if you don’t get it, if you can’t read yourself into the lines of the verse, then it doesn’t matter, because THIS POEM IS NOT FOR YOU - her poetry is an act of truth-speaking that carries its own power, one that is more about her own relationship with the world and the hereafter than it is about you getting the point of it:
and if it is for you
then at least let me tell you
don’t you dare file it away some place
don’t you dare blink-nod it into the “race” draw
or “mm”-scrunch-eye it into the “colonialism” cupboard
don’t token-applaud it into the “feminism” lever-arch
I can see you doing it now
this poem is beyond you (p.14)
The poetry isn’t about simply screaming into the void; this is an opening into her own development as a person. The one who grates at her brother’s use of the word ‘paki’ in front of her. We follow their relationship around this word in PAKIas she smiles at his fourth use of it in front of her, but if you know Suhaiymah, then you can see the gentleness and care with which she seeks to teach herself and her sibling in this moment – it’s a journey she will take with him:
I lead him into the kitchen
cut out our tongues
and sew them back together in new shapes
relearning the language of our grandmother (p.20)
There is a tutelage that occurs that is not just of her making, it is recognised in the homage that she pays to her mother, but also to her maternal grandparents, there is a poem for NANI and NANA but a more general and genuine love for those who have laid a platform for our lives, because the only people she wants “to fall in love with me / are old women” (p.36) – a reverence for their wisdom, love and kindness that isn’t a throwback to a bygone era – this is part of how she is rooting her contemporary strength, and being completely unashamed about that. As we are sold ideas of atomization, of happiness through material things rather than being intricately connected to our communities, Suhaiymah’s sharing of her own private relationships with these elderly women feels like an ultimate ethic of counter-culture:
The shy offering urges me to take the plunge
and the plunge feels more like floating
so I reach into it
I say, squeezing the flesh of her right lower leg
I say, mei aap ko boht pyaar karti hu
adamantly focusing my eyes on her shin (p.36)
Immediately with these words I am transported to New Garden Town in Lahore, in the home of my own Nani, squeezing her legs as a child, as my brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles sit around her listening to her stories of the past, a melding of laughter, crying and joy, of being present and in that moment. The sharing of these intimate moments has so much more meaning than the simple act of sharing a tender moment, we are confronted with the latest version of our own connections or lack thereof. As Muslims, we’re told to maintain ties to family, and by the end of VOICES ROLL OVER THE CHARPAI you can only ask yourself, am I doing enough?
That is the thing about Suhaiymah, she doesn’t see the world in narrow areas in the way that subject matter area experts do, she is engaging with it all simultaneously, so poems about her grandparents never seem out of place with her critique of the War on Terror. There is nothing secular in this collection as faith, identity, politics and family are in constant conversation because for her:
If all the oceans were ink
they would run dry before the words of my Creator did (p.118)
This is the Creator that Suhaiymah recites “subhanallahi wa bihamdihi” (p.73) to as she cycles her way to my favourite mosque in the UK, Lewisham. Much like her, it is a space that doesn’t secularise the prayer from the mosque from the praying with our feet that Martin Luther King Jr spoke of – that interacting with the real world, working with local communities, engaging in issues of social justice and speaking truth to power are all part and parcel of a complete Muslim life. Her ode to prayer and the mosque in A POEM THAT WINDS THROUGH THE STREETS OF LEWISHAM reads more like a litany than it does a poem:
mosque is a girl in a mosque
head rounded dome-like gazing downwards
legs rooted firmly to the ground side by side cacophony of nations
voices like hands sliding over each other in salaam
girl thinks of writing a poem when praying
thinks praying is a poem – no incentive but another world (pp.73-74)
All of this possibly comes back to one of the central themes of Suhaiymah’s writing, which is an escape from what William Blake described in London as the “mind-forg’d manacles” – the chains that we are bound by in a world not of our making. The world she inhabits, is one that only ever ‘sees’ her as an object as she proclaims in Q: “WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A MUSLIM WOMAN?” – a question that recognises the epistemic violence that is often accompanied with attempts to construct Muslim women externally:
It is to be always an object
object of fascination: veiled body object of desire: mystery body
object of ridicule: letterbox body
always an object. (p.84)
This objectification is raised immediately in the following poem ‘SCHOOL INSPECTORS IN ENGLAND HAVE BEEN TOLD TO START ASKING YOUNG GIRLS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL WHY THEY ARE WEARING A HIJAB IN ORDER TO ASCERTAIN IF THEY ARE BEING SEXUALISED.’ for Ofsted – a direct response to attempts to save Muslim women from themselves. It is in these poems that you find her strongest voiced reserved, she calls out the hypocrisy of state institutions that have little interest in actually caring for Muslim women when the state is responsible for the harm that is perpetrated against them:
you do not care about Muslim girls when we are drowning
when we are neglected
when we are at your borders
when we are starving
when we are in detention centres waiting for deportation (p.87)
Fittingly, this collection is ended with the poem that captured the imagination of Muslims all over the world as the strength of her words went viral across the internet. THIS IS NOT A HUMANISING POEM was relatable on so many levels that even two years later, it still moves audiences despite the number of times they might have heard it. The fundamental truth of her words, is that they reverse all preconceived notions on how Muslims are caged, how they are required to exist within secular modernity, and her subversion of those notions stands as the anthem to our resistance, and so like Suhaiymah, I will end this piece with her words:
Instead
love us when we’re lazy
love us when we’re poor
love us in our back-to-backs, council estates, depressed, unwashed and weeping
love us high as kites, unemployed, joy-riding, time-wasting, failing at school
love us filthy, without the right colour passports, without the right sounding English
love us silent, unapologizing, shopping in Poundland
skiving off school, homeless, unsure, sometimes violent
love us when we aren’t athletes, when we don’t bake cakes
when we don’t offer our homes, or free taxi rides after the event when we’re wretched, suicidal, naked and contributing nothing
love us then
Because if you need me to prove my humanity
I’m not the one that’s not human (pp.140-141)
Even the dark humour that permeates the pages of the collection cannot be reduced to banter, the acerbic wit has a constant feeling of poignancy. You get a real sense of this from the titles, and the oft-accompanying subtitles that so readily capture Suhaiymah’s lack of reticence in discomforting the reader. ‘STRADDLING THE / LINE you’ll know if it’s for you’ - there isn’t any hiding, as the poetry address typologies of abuse. The reader is forced to confront themselves by the notion that they may well be the subject of the poem’s content. This immediately makes the target of her critique both simultaneously knowable and unknowable - a difficult thing to achieve. We are treated to a form of critique that is generalised to become advice, and not specified to embarrass - and just like the best of the Prophet Muhammad’s (saws) advice, it was given to make people consider its implications in their own lives.
Another example of this comes in ‘PICK ONE for the woman who asked’ “Muslim, Feminist, or Human?” (p.90). The unnamed woman who asked this question is provided a response, and while she is not named, her name is meaningless because Suhaiymah’s response is never a personal attack, it’s a moment of critique and education. Even if you don’t get it, if you can’t read yourself into the lines of the verse, then it doesn’t matter, because THIS POEM IS NOT FOR YOU - her poetry is an act of truth-speaking that carries its own power, one that is more about her own relationship with the world and the hereafter than it is about you getting the point of it:
and if it is for you
then at least let me tell you
don’t you dare file it away some place
don’t you dare blink-nod it into the “race” draw
or “mm”-scrunch-eye it into the “colonialism” cupboard
don’t token-applaud it into the “feminism” lever-arch
I can see you doing it now
this poem is beyond you (p.14)
The poetry isn’t about simply screaming into the void; this is an opening into her own development as a person. The one who grates at her brother’s use of the word ‘paki’ in front of her. We follow their relationship around this word in PAKIas she smiles at his fourth use of it in front of her, but if you know Suhaiymah, then you can see the gentleness and care with which she seeks to teach herself and her sibling in this moment – it’s a journey she will take with him:
I lead him into the kitchen
cut out our tongues
and sew them back together in new shapes
relearning the language of our grandmother (p.20)
There is a tutelage that occurs that is not just of her making, it is recognised in the homage that she pays to her mother, but also to her maternal grandparents, there is a poem for NANI and NANA but a more general and genuine love for those who have laid a platform for our lives, because the only people she wants “to fall in love with me / are old women” (p.36) – a reverence for their wisdom, love and kindness that isn’t a throwback to a bygone era – this is part of how she is rooting her contemporary strength, and being completely unashamed about that. As we are sold ideas of atomization, of happiness through material things rather than being intricately connected to our communities, Suhaiymah’s sharing of her own private relationships with these elderly women feels like an ultimate ethic of counter-culture:
The shy offering urges me to take the plunge
and the plunge feels more like floating
so I reach into it
I say, squeezing the flesh of her right lower leg
I say, mei aap ko boht pyaar karti hu
adamantly focusing my eyes on her shin (p.36)
Immediately with these words I am transported to New Garden Town in Lahore, in the home of my own Nani, squeezing her legs as a child, as my brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles sit around her listening to her stories of the past, a melding of laughter, crying and joy, of being present and in that moment. The sharing of these intimate moments has so much more meaning than the simple act of sharing a tender moment, we are confronted with the latest version of our own connections or lack thereof. As Muslims, we’re told to maintain ties to family, and by the end of VOICES ROLL OVER THE CHARPAI you can only ask yourself, am I doing enough?
That is the thing about Suhaiymah, she doesn’t see the world in narrow areas in the way that subject matter area experts do, she is engaging with it all simultaneously, so poems about her grandparents never seem out of place with her critique of the War on Terror. There is nothing secular in this collection as faith, identity, politics and family are in constant conversation because for her:
If all the oceans were ink
they would run dry before the words of my Creator did (p.118)
This is the Creator that Suhaiymah recites “subhanallahi wa bihamdihi” (p.73) to as she cycles her way to my favourite mosque in the UK, Lewisham. Much like her, it is a space that doesn’t secularise the prayer from the mosque from the praying with our feet that Martin Luther King Jr spoke of – that interacting with the real world, working with local communities, engaging in issues of social justice and speaking truth to power are all part and parcel of a complete Muslim life. Her ode to prayer and the mosque in A POEM THAT WINDS THROUGH THE STREETS OF LEWISHAM reads more like a litany than it does a poem:
mosque is a girl in a mosque
head rounded dome-like gazing downwards
legs rooted firmly to the ground side by side cacophony of nations
voices like hands sliding over each other in salaam
girl thinks of writing a poem when praying
thinks praying is a poem – no incentive but another world (pp.73-74)
All of this possibly comes back to one of the central themes of Suhaiymah’s writing, which is an escape from what William Blake described in London as the “mind-forg’d manacles” – the chains that we are bound by in a world not of our making. The world she inhabits, is one that only ever ‘sees’ her as an object as she proclaims in Q: “WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A MUSLIM WOMAN?” – a question that recognises the epistemic violence that is often accompanied with attempts to construct Muslim women externally:
It is to be always an object
object of fascination: veiled body object of desire: mystery body
object of ridicule: letterbox body
always an object. (p.84)
This objectification is raised immediately in the following poem ‘SCHOOL INSPECTORS IN ENGLAND HAVE BEEN TOLD TO START ASKING YOUNG GIRLS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL WHY THEY ARE WEARING A HIJAB IN ORDER TO ASCERTAIN IF THEY ARE BEING SEXUALISED.’ for Ofsted – a direct response to attempts to save Muslim women from themselves. It is in these poems that you find her strongest voiced reserved, she calls out the hypocrisy of state institutions that have little interest in actually caring for Muslim women when the state is responsible for the harm that is perpetrated against them:
you do not care about Muslim girls when we are drowning
when we are neglected
when we are at your borders
when we are starving
when we are in detention centres waiting for deportation (p.87)
Fittingly, this collection is ended with the poem that captured the imagination of Muslims all over the world as the strength of her words went viral across the internet. THIS IS NOT A HUMANISING POEM was relatable on so many levels that even two years later, it still moves audiences despite the number of times they might have heard it. The fundamental truth of her words, is that they reverse all preconceived notions on how Muslims are caged, how they are required to exist within secular modernity, and her subversion of those notions stands as the anthem to our resistance, and so like Suhaiymah, I will end this piece with her words:
Instead
love us when we’re lazy
love us when we’re poor
love us in our back-to-backs, council estates, depressed, unwashed and weeping
love us high as kites, unemployed, joy-riding, time-wasting, failing at school
love us filthy, without the right colour passports, without the right sounding English
love us silent, unapologizing, shopping in Poundland
skiving off school, homeless, unsure, sometimes violent
love us when we aren’t athletes, when we don’t bake cakes
when we don’t offer our homes, or free taxi rides after the event when we’re wretched, suicidal, naked and contributing nothing
love us then
Because if you need me to prove my humanity
I’m not the one that’s not human (pp.140-141)
December 2, 2019
Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan came to the attention of most of us with her fantastic ’This is not a humanising poem’ at the Roundhouse poetry slam in 2017. It’s notable, to me at least, that while this is the concluding poem of this powerful, engaging and give-me-more collection, it opens with a piece she did the heats – ‘This poem is not for you’ – that explores the performance and exposure of self that is at the heart of much spoken word, and is a key element of the slam format. This bookending highlights a theme woven through this essential collection: who is spoken for, who speaks and the costs, dangers, risks and necessity of speaking for and as the marginalised, dispossessed and no longer all-that-silent.
I guess I could rave for hours about the quality of these pieces, about the way they/she teases out antagonism and contradiction, exposes the ways discourses of power parlay a performance of support to sustain that Power. Or I could muse on the beauty of delighting in moments with grandparents, or when winding through Lewisham streets. Equally, I could celebrate that several of the poems come with short essays or explanatory notes, and supplementary reading – that these are commentaries on the condition of our world and our lives, and hope that they can become educational practices. Most of all, I could shout out loud that these are a critique and a call to action, that this is Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach in spoken word form – that’s the one where he said, ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it’.
In other moments I would celebrate the excoriation of stereotype or the commodification of all around us, including our opposition to that commodification. But most of all I want to commend to all a writer whose voice picks away at the hypocrisies of the everyday, ordinary practices of power that beguile and seduce us with its simplicities, its promises to change, to make better the damage it has been promising to make better for centuries; it’s a voice of fellow citizens we seldom hear, unless they are saying what we want to hear – and even then it is usually being said for them. It’s the voice of a damned fine poet – who is also one of our finest public intellectuals.
Essential reading for a better world.
I guess I could rave for hours about the quality of these pieces, about the way they/she teases out antagonism and contradiction, exposes the ways discourses of power parlay a performance of support to sustain that Power. Or I could muse on the beauty of delighting in moments with grandparents, or when winding through Lewisham streets. Equally, I could celebrate that several of the poems come with short essays or explanatory notes, and supplementary reading – that these are commentaries on the condition of our world and our lives, and hope that they can become educational practices. Most of all, I could shout out loud that these are a critique and a call to action, that this is Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach in spoken word form – that’s the one where he said, ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it’.
In other moments I would celebrate the excoriation of stereotype or the commodification of all around us, including our opposition to that commodification. But most of all I want to commend to all a writer whose voice picks away at the hypocrisies of the everyday, ordinary practices of power that beguile and seduce us with its simplicities, its promises to change, to make better the damage it has been promising to make better for centuries; it’s a voice of fellow citizens we seldom hear, unless they are saying what we want to hear – and even then it is usually being said for them. It’s the voice of a damned fine poet – who is also one of our finest public intellectuals.
Essential reading for a better world.
October 22, 2022
"Because if you need me to prove my humanity/ I'm not the one that's not human"
Usually, I don't know that I would rate a poetry collection - similar to how I don't rate nonfiction. But I'm hoping that if I give this a rating, it can be found by more people. The poems in this are so important, and I read it slower so that they would really sink in, stay with me. Manzoor-Khan has such an amazing skill with words and poetry, and to make you feel both uncomfortable and nodding with agreement at the same time - at least for myself as a white woman. It is an amazing collection and I would highly recommend to poetry or spoken-word lovers!
Massive thank you to my friend Hana for gifting me this copy!!
TW: Islamophobia, death, deportation, police brutality, gaslighting, racism, violence, war, Xenophobia
Usually, I don't know that I would rate a poetry collection - similar to how I don't rate nonfiction. But I'm hoping that if I give this a rating, it can be found by more people. The poems in this are so important, and I read it slower so that they would really sink in, stay with me. Manzoor-Khan has such an amazing skill with words and poetry, and to make you feel both uncomfortable and nodding with agreement at the same time - at least for myself as a white woman. It is an amazing collection and I would highly recommend to poetry or spoken-word lovers!
Massive thank you to my friend Hana for gifting me this copy!!
TW: Islamophobia, death, deportation, police brutality, gaslighting, racism, violence, war, Xenophobia
March 27, 2021
Very very powerful and flows beautifully
August 11, 2022
I went to a talk by Manzoor-Khan and was blown away! She talks so eloquently of so much atrocity and still manages to have high hopes for change. This collection of poems were breathtaking and I only wish every MP everywhere would read it!
January 2, 2023
CW: Grief, PTSD, Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, violence, references to: war, terrorism, torture
August 30, 2024
Fantastic collection of poems by Manzoor-Khan. Spellbinding writing, she is unbelievable.
The poems will stay with me.
The poems will stay with me.
November 28, 2022
I met the author at a talk and felt inspired by her, so I had truly high expectations for this book.
I really appreciated that there's context/explanations provided for some poems and some of these poems I did love. Others were okay. Some less like poetry. And many were kind of similar, with recurring techniques and topics, not really offering new insights.
One I really, really liked however, is 'British Values' and I would highly recommend reading/listening to that one.
I really appreciated that there's context/explanations provided for some poems and some of these poems I did love. Others were okay. Some less like poetry. And many were kind of similar, with recurring techniques and topics, not really offering new insights.
One I really, really liked however, is 'British Values' and I would highly recommend reading/listening to that one.
September 5, 2020
Poetry that's got my feminist academic brain churning and running throughout the book. Just as potent as the truth bombs within the poems are the observations in the endnotes that detail the reasons and sources of information that invigorate the poems - I have never before read endnotes with such vigour. Loved this.
October 24, 2020
i love the way suhaiymah manzoor khan is not afraid to be literal. her metaphor hits too, but it's the way this collection just tells it like it is that makes it so impactful. i loved this book and it's my dream to see her perform live one day :')
January 17, 2025
Everything there is to say, has been written in this book. I'm just here to say, pick it up. Please! This is a book so needed more so today than yesterday. I find it to be a book that should continuously be revisited to serve as a reminder of the word humanity.
November 23, 2019
Idek how to review this but it is an incredible collection of poems that are so important!!!
Love how she tackles and Qs so many things and Masha’Allah she really has a way with words!
One of my fave poems is the ‘funeral of the authentic Muslim woman’
Also obv the ‘this is not a humanising poem’
But the prevent poem and british values and islamophobia one as well!!
Defo check out her spoken word on YouTube and her unboxing islamophobia videos!!!
Highly recommend this to anyone and everyone!
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Love how she tackles and Qs so many things and Masha’Allah she really has a way with words!
One of my fave poems is the ‘funeral of the authentic Muslim woman’
Also obv the ‘this is not a humanising poem’
But the prevent poem and british values and islamophobia one as well!!
Defo check out her spoken word on YouTube and her unboxing islamophobia videos!!!
Highly recommend this to anyone and everyone!
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
December 4, 2019
Absolutely loved it!
August 26, 2024
I enjoyed these poems on a cognitive level greatly, but slightly less on an emotional way, which does not detract from this great collection at all. Themes of isolation, stereotypes, belonging, Britishness and international relations. Some poems I adored, all were worth reading.
“ do not know how to write us outside of bangles and anklets gold and pretty
but still a type of chain.
I do not know how to write us outside of romance and tragedy tears of joy or tears of grief
which for us too often are made the same.
I do not know how to write us outside of long hair and long eyelashes which apparently suit us better than long lives.
I do not know how to write us outside of fear, yet whispers and elisions and repeated mistakes
I wonder if our mothers promised they would not do the same.”
“because his crumbling is known to us
it's a familiar debris we know to hate but not much what else to do its the crumbling of mortgages that sap your sleep before your pocket”
“ do not know how to write us outside of bangles and anklets gold and pretty
but still a type of chain.
I do not know how to write us outside of romance and tragedy tears of joy or tears of grief
which for us too often are made the same.
I do not know how to write us outside of long hair and long eyelashes which apparently suit us better than long lives.
I do not know how to write us outside of fear, yet whispers and elisions and repeated mistakes
I wonder if our mothers promised they would not do the same.”
“because his crumbling is known to us
it's a familiar debris we know to hate but not much what else to do its the crumbling of mortgages that sap your sleep before your pocket”
December 15, 2020
Suhaiymah’s poems are a balm for the soul but they’re also a call. A call to reject the labels the world gives Muslim people and Muslim women. A call to reject stereotypes and justifying humanity. Her poems make you cry and make you angry and just invoke so many feelings.
Just like Fatimah Asghar’s If they come for us, I’m sure Postcolonial Banter is going to be the book I return to again and again and again and find new meanings and feelings every time I read it.
Just like Fatimah Asghar’s If they come for us, I’m sure Postcolonial Banter is going to be the book I return to again and again and again and find new meanings and feelings every time I read it.
June 23, 2022
I appreciate the candour, authenticity, and forcefulness of the author’s voice. Her poems are a form of talking back at societal and political forces within the Uk that dehumanise her and people of her community. Artful yet unpretentious. I suggested readers look at videos of her performing her poetry. Much more impactful.
September 6, 2022
I really enjoyed these poems. Having glosses and background information for many poems made for an in depth reading experience, and the suggestion that this context became necessary once spoken poems became written (and thus dislocated from vocal emphases and stresses) was an interesting consideration of performance.
September 13, 2021
While there are some hidden gems here, I could tell this was a debut poetry collection. There was a lot of telling, and very little showing, and while I can only nod in agreement with the messages Manzoor-Khan transmits through her work, I missed the poetry in them.
July 16, 2025
I'm not a poetry person but I think this was good. I hate that I kinda have to review every book I read now when I have not much to say but people should read this. It's worth your time. A lot of things analyzed in this I only started understanding in the past couple years.
March 7, 2021
Her poetry in prose highlights the intersects of Identity and politics. She makes the personal political without undermining those precious moments of her personal life.
July 24, 2021
What a voice. What a writer. Really enjoyed Suhaiymah’s wit and the rawness that accompanied these poems. I can’t wait to read more of her work.
October 29, 2021
My favorite poems are:
4. Theatres
4. Decentering Diversity
6. Bacon, Banknotes, Benjamins
4. Theatres
4. Decentering Diversity
6. Bacon, Banknotes, Benjamins
April 12, 2022
Wish I could give it a million stars
August 22, 2023
The best poetry anthology I’ve read in a long time
August 30, 2024
4.5 stars
October 30, 2024
Absolutely stunning, a voice everyone should hear.
November 10, 2024
Excellent
March 7, 2020
Educational and a voice that everyone needs to hear, however I felt that some of these poems worked better in performance than as poetry on the page.
Read
September 25, 20243.5/5
More thoughts to come, but let it be said I very much appreciated the "context boxes" filled with notes and further reading at the end of some of these poems. As someone who sometimes struggles with poems, I like that the author intentionally added context so we the readers could "puzzle over [our] reactions and responses."
More thoughts to come, but let it be said I very much appreciated the "context boxes" filled with notes and further reading at the end of some of these poems. As someone who sometimes struggles with poems, I like that the author intentionally added context so we the readers could "puzzle over [our] reactions and responses."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews