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Girls That Never Die: Poems
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2022)Intimate poems that explore feminine shame and violence and imagine what liberation from these threats might look like, from the award-winning author of The January Children
In Girls That Never Die, award-winning poet Safia Elhillo reinvents the epic to explore Muslim girlhood and shame, the dangers of being a woman, and the myriad violences enacted and imagined against women’s bodies. Drawing from her own life and family histories, as well as cultural myths and news stories about honor killings and genital mutilation, she interlaces the everyday traumas of growing up a girl under patriarchy with magical realist imaginings of rebellion, autonomy, and power.
Elhillo writes a new world: women escape their stonings by birds that carry the rocks away; slain girls grow into two, like the hydra of lore, sprouting too numerous to ever be eradicated; circles of women are deemed holy, protected. Ultimately, Girls That Never Die is about wrestling ourselves from the threats of violence that constrain our lives, and instead looking to freedom and questioning:
[what if i will not die]
[what will govern me then]
In Girls That Never Die, award-winning poet Safia Elhillo reinvents the epic to explore Muslim girlhood and shame, the dangers of being a woman, and the myriad violences enacted and imagined against women’s bodies. Drawing from her own life and family histories, as well as cultural myths and news stories about honor killings and genital mutilation, she interlaces the everyday traumas of growing up a girl under patriarchy with magical realist imaginings of rebellion, autonomy, and power.
Elhillo writes a new world: women escape their stonings by birds that carry the rocks away; slain girls grow into two, like the hydra of lore, sprouting too numerous to ever be eradicated; circles of women are deemed holy, protected. Ultimately, Girls That Never Die is about wrestling ourselves from the threats of violence that constrain our lives, and instead looking to freedom and questioning:
[what if i will not die]
[what will govern me then]
144 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 265 reviews
May 9, 2022
Girls That Never Die is an incredibly moving, and well-structured collection of poetry about being a Muslim girl, about shame, about the silent hurts women carry, about the pressures of cultural expectations, about dangerous silences. The writing here is incisive and intimate and eloquent. Truly, a stunning collection of poems. I particularly appreciated the range of forms across the poems and the structure of the book as a whole. Many of the poems end in ways that will leave you gasping. Loved this book.
Some standout poems: Ode to My Homegirls, Zamalek, and Orpheus but really every single poem is stellar, no skips as the kids say. Also, A+ cover.
Some standout poems: Ode to My Homegirls, Zamalek, and Orpheus but really every single poem is stellar, no skips as the kids say. Also, A+ cover.
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May 23, 2024
‘This is the book I was most afraid to write’ says poet and author Safia Elhillo about her second volume of poetry, Girls That Never Die. Yet through her trepidation, Elhillo bravely and beautifully delivers this collection of poetry that is an ode to Muslim girlhood and sisterhood, a tribute to the transition from girlhood into womanhood, a love for one’s body and desire for agency over it, but also a bold rebuttal against the patriarchal violence and abuse that assail them. Through gorgeously structured poems, Elhillo experiments with form and prose to capture the ideas of spaces women occupy or are forced into. A moving collection that is as rebellious and uplifting as it is contemplative and wrestling with shame and violence, Girls That Never Die shows how language can be resistance and testimony and how poetry can unpack even the most private and abstract inner turmoils in order to name it and face it.
Pomegranate
Because I am their daughter my body is not mine.
I was raised like fruit, unpeeled & then peeled. Raised
to bleed in some man’s bed. I was given my name
& with it my instructions. Pure. Pure.
& is it wasted on me? Every moment I do not touch
myself, every moment I leave my body on its back
to be a wife while I go somewhere above the room.
I return to the soil & search. I know it’s there. Buried
shallow, wrapped in rags dark with old & forgotten rust,
their discarded part.
Buried without ceremony,
buried like fallen seeds.
I wonder about the trees: Date palms veined
through the fruit with the copper taste of cutting.
Guavas that, when slit, purple dark as raw meat.
I have to wonder, of course, about the blood orange, about the pomegranate, splayed open, like something that once was alive & remains.
Sudanese-American Safia Elhillo has had quite an impressive career through her now two collections of poems and YA novels and verse, the Coretta Scott King Award winning Home Is Not a Country and Bright Red Fruit. Yet for this collection she says she wasn’t sure if the issues were what she wanted to put into poetry. ‘For a long time I thought it would just be easier to not say anything at all,’ she told NPR, ‘but my silence will not protect me, and it will not protect my community either.’ This collection, she says, is for her community. For Muslim women and girls and takes a direct look at the violence and oppressions they face in their own community and the world. She elaborates on this—and her worries about writing about it—further in an interview with Porter House Review:
While many of us are outside this community, it is still important to listen and learn and her poems do an excellent job of portraying the fears and shames she and many others have experienced. I don't really need to have an opinion on these poems because they aren't for me persay, and I think thats cool and really respect that. I also really appreciate her willingness to speak on important topics despite her concerns. But I also was quite impressed by her craft and her poetic ability to skillfully present these themes and I really want to amplify her voice and present these poems here. As she tells NPR, this collection is about:
I believe this is a message we can all take to heart even outside the communities she is addressing and confront how horrifically immersed society at large is too in gendered violence and misogynistic policing of women presenting bodies, tone, and voices. Through these poems we see a lot of the spaces that women are confined into. She details a lifetime of grappling with the feeling that all she was told she could be was to be raised to be obedient and silent then be married off and feel like property. Like property exchanging hands from the parental family to the duties of a spouse under the rule of a man. She eloquently addresses this confinement in the titular poem Girls That Never Die:
i am asked to change my dress
i am asked to line my eyes
never an order only the slight apology
[people will talk]
It is a confinement into an object without a voice beyond apology, almost as if to imply an apology for taking up any space at all. She also tells us of the threats of violence from men, how pervasive it is that ‘even in the dream / we are afraid’ and that all are beleaguered by it no matter their age. ‘Everyone thinks I am a little girl / & still they hunt me, still they show their teeth.’ I think this is important to reckon with, especially when the bad faith arguments from men labeling feminism a form of misandry conveniently ignores that the frequency and severity of aggression and objectification from men leaves very little comfortable space to move in the world or blindly trust a strange man. Or any, as the majority of violence against women comes from an intimate partner or familiar acquaintance. And this is something men have to recognize and dismantle instead of simply letting women once again bear the brunt of the emotional labor in fighting against it. Yet amongst all the insight into the fears and struggles, these poems also champion a kinship and committed support to women of the community. To rise above, to rise together and to ask ‘how boundless I could make my life.’ There is a strong and hopeful spirit of resistance alive in these poems that shines through the darkness.
‘ wanting was my first language i learned it as a child’
The language in this collection is incredible and evokes strong emotion through extraordinary imagery and form. In conversation with Porter House Review she explains that many of her poems began in workshops under Nobel winning poet Louise Glück, who ‘encouraged me toward capitalization and punctuation.’ She has written poetry in the spirit of Glück, such as a recent one in Poetry Magazine that you can read HERE. Aside from her, Elhillo cites influences in Eavan Boland, Aracelis Girmay, Patricia Smith and Kwame Dawes, who ‘has been a poetry fairy godfather to me’ she says. One that really stood out to me was Anne Carson, of whom she says ‘has been very important to me for a lot of my writing life.’ I love Elhillo’s use of brackets in her works, often leaving them open ended which reminds me much of Carson’s poetry. I love the use of brackets and space in these poems this one, Profanity for example:
ninety-nine names for my god
though i know none for my [ ]
a failing not of my deity but of
my arabic not the language
itself rather the overeager mosaic
i hoard i steal i borrow
from pop songs & mine
from childhood fluency i guard
my few swearwords like tinkling
silver anklets spare & precious
& never nearly enough to muster
a proper arabic anger proper arabic
vulgarity only a passing spar
always using the names of animals
i am not polite i am only inarticulate
overproud of my little arsenal
a stranger blows a wet tobacco kiss
through the window of my taxi
& i deploy my meager weapons
[dog] [pig] [donkey]
& finally my crown jewel
i pass my tongue across my teeth
crane my neck about the window
& call [your mother’s ]
Elhillo uses it in a way that feels like taking up the torch for something fresh in new directions. The structure of many of these poems explore the space of the page in a way that helps explore the spaces occupied by women and she has an excellent ability to use not only words but the shape of the words and poems to enhance the experience.
I do not want any of what I've lost.
I want only what I have now, to keep it.
This is a very moving collection and one from a poet I have long admired since I first read her works in The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me of which she was an editor. Girls That Never Die is a bright and bold statement against violence and in support of Muslim women and a voice we should all listen to.
4.5/5
[what if i will not die]
[what will govern me then]
[how to govern me then]
Pomegranate
Because I am their daughter my body is not mine.
I was raised like fruit, unpeeled & then peeled. Raised
to bleed in some man’s bed. I was given my name
& with it my instructions. Pure. Pure.
& is it wasted on me? Every moment I do not touch
myself, every moment I leave my body on its back
to be a wife while I go somewhere above the room.
I return to the soil & search. I know it’s there. Buried
shallow, wrapped in rags dark with old & forgotten rust,
their discarded part.
Buried without ceremony,
buried like fallen seeds.
I wonder about the trees: Date palms veined
through the fruit with the copper taste of cutting.
Guavas that, when slit, purple dark as raw meat.
I have to wonder, of course, about the blood orange, about the pomegranate, splayed open, like something that once was alive & remains.
Sudanese-American Safia Elhillo has had quite an impressive career through her now two collections of poems and YA novels and verse, the Coretta Scott King Award winning Home Is Not a Country and Bright Red Fruit. Yet for this collection she says she wasn’t sure if the issues were what she wanted to put into poetry. ‘For a long time I thought it would just be easier to not say anything at all,’ she told NPR, ‘but my silence will not protect me, and it will not protect my community either.’ This collection, she says, is for her community. For Muslim women and girls and takes a direct look at the violence and oppressions they face in their own community and the world. She elaborates on this—and her worries about writing about it—further in an interview with Porter House Review:
‘I’m not trying to snitch on my community because I’m not talking to anyone except for my community! Everyone else is welcome to eavesdrop, or to listen in, but I’m not really positioning myself to make an outward facing dispatch about violence in my community. I’m trying to have a conversation from—yes a place of grief and mourning—but also from a place of love to my community, to the femmes in my community, and to the people who have experienced this harm.’
While many of us are outside this community, it is still important to listen and learn and her poems do an excellent job of portraying the fears and shames she and many others have experienced. I don't really need to have an opinion on these poems because they aren't for me persay, and I think thats cool and really respect that. I also really appreciate her willingness to speak on important topics despite her concerns. But I also was quite impressed by her craft and her poetic ability to skillfully present these themes and I really want to amplify her voice and present these poems here. As she tells NPR, this collection is about:
‘The threat of death and the fear of death – those are so often used to govern and to control. So if the girls never die, if the girls won’t die, maybe they’re free from that governance and from that control. And then what could that look like?’
I believe this is a message we can all take to heart even outside the communities she is addressing and confront how horrifically immersed society at large is too in gendered violence and misogynistic policing of women presenting bodies, tone, and voices. Through these poems we see a lot of the spaces that women are confined into. She details a lifetime of grappling with the feeling that all she was told she could be was to be raised to be obedient and silent then be married off and feel like property. Like property exchanging hands from the parental family to the duties of a spouse under the rule of a man. She eloquently addresses this confinement in the titular poem Girls That Never Die:
i am asked to change my dress
i am asked to line my eyes
never an order only the slight apology
[people will talk]
It is a confinement into an object without a voice beyond apology, almost as if to imply an apology for taking up any space at all. She also tells us of the threats of violence from men, how pervasive it is that ‘even in the dream / we are afraid’ and that all are beleaguered by it no matter their age. ‘Everyone thinks I am a little girl / & still they hunt me, still they show their teeth.’ I think this is important to reckon with, especially when the bad faith arguments from men labeling feminism a form of misandry conveniently ignores that the frequency and severity of aggression and objectification from men leaves very little comfortable space to move in the world or blindly trust a strange man. Or any, as the majority of violence against women comes from an intimate partner or familiar acquaintance. And this is something men have to recognize and dismantle instead of simply letting women once again bear the brunt of the emotional labor in fighting against it. Yet amongst all the insight into the fears and struggles, these poems also champion a kinship and committed support to women of the community. To rise above, to rise together and to ask ‘how boundless I could make my life.’ There is a strong and hopeful spirit of resistance alive in these poems that shines through the darkness.
‘ wanting was my first language i learned it as a child’
The language in this collection is incredible and evokes strong emotion through extraordinary imagery and form. In conversation with Porter House Review she explains that many of her poems began in workshops under Nobel winning poet Louise Glück, who ‘encouraged me toward capitalization and punctuation.’ She has written poetry in the spirit of Glück, such as a recent one in Poetry Magazine that you can read HERE. Aside from her, Elhillo cites influences in Eavan Boland, Aracelis Girmay, Patricia Smith and Kwame Dawes, who ‘has been a poetry fairy godfather to me’ she says. One that really stood out to me was Anne Carson, of whom she says ‘has been very important to me for a lot of my writing life.’ I love Elhillo’s use of brackets in her works, often leaving them open ended which reminds me much of Carson’s poetry. I love the use of brackets and space in these poems this one, Profanity for example:
ninety-nine names for my god
though i know none for my [ ]
a failing not of my deity but of
my arabic not the language
itself rather the overeager mosaic
i hoard i steal i borrow
from pop songs & mine
from childhood fluency i guard
my few swearwords like tinkling
silver anklets spare & precious
& never nearly enough to muster
a proper arabic anger proper arabic
vulgarity only a passing spar
always using the names of animals
i am not polite i am only inarticulate
overproud of my little arsenal
a stranger blows a wet tobacco kiss
through the window of my taxi
& i deploy my meager weapons
[dog] [pig] [donkey]
& finally my crown jewel
i pass my tongue across my teeth
crane my neck about the window
& call [your mother’s ]
Elhillo uses it in a way that feels like taking up the torch for something fresh in new directions. The structure of many of these poems explore the space of the page in a way that helps explore the spaces occupied by women and she has an excellent ability to use not only words but the shape of the words and poems to enhance the experience.
I do not want any of what I've lost.
I want only what I have now, to keep it.
This is a very moving collection and one from a poet I have long admired since I first read her works in The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me of which she was an editor. Girls That Never Die is a bright and bold statement against violence and in support of Muslim women and a voice we should all listen to.
4.5/5
[what if i will not die]
[what will govern me then]
[how to govern me then]
October 4, 2022
Safia has done it again! Girls That Never Die was my most anticipated release for 2022. I fell in love with Safia's poetry a couple of years ago through her debut collection The January Children. I loved how she explored her own Brown girlhood. Her language was sensual, yet poignant. The images she created beautiful and haunting.
Back in the day, I used to read a lot more modern poetry than I do now. I feel like that era has ended (for me). I tend to stick with classic poetry these days. Only Danez Smith and Safia Elhillo manage to make me crawl out of my dusty hole to pick up their new collections!
After having read (and reread) Safia's debut YA novel in verse home is not a country and not being overly impressed with it, I feared that her sophomore poetry collection wouldn't do it for me anymore. After I saw the spectacular cover design (shout out to photographer Hassan Hajjaj), my expectations rose slightly. When I finally held the book in my hands, in mid-July, I took it to the beach with me and read most of it there – lying in the sand, with the sound of water, children playing and adults chattering in the background. It was lovely.
Reading Girls That Never Die was a totally immersive experience. From the first to the last page, Safia invited me into her world... the world of a Brown muslim woman, who navigates between Sudan and the United States of America, who lives in both the English and Arabic language, who believes in Allah but not in covering herself and shaming women for their sexuality, who loves their family, yet is in constant struggle with it.
In many ways, Safia's sophomore collection is a lot more honest and raw than her debut. She explores (her) feminine shame and the violence that she and her sistas (and mothers...) go through simply because they are women. She doesn't hold back. She explores the topics of female genital mutilation, the shame surrounding it and how it's a taboo topic, even amongst women, she explores her own body, what it means to her and how it is perceived by other, especially men (whether their family members of strangers... Safia often feels like her body doesn't belong to her).
But Safia also writes about liberation, she envisions magical realist rebellions, she dreams of power and autonomy. You could say she truly does reshape the world: women escape their stonings by birds that carry the rocks away; slain girls grow into two, like the hydra of lore, sprouting too numerous to ever be eradicated; circles of women are deemed holy, protected. She daringly asks: "what if i will not die / what will govern me then"? What would happen if all those girls who are subjected to violence and trauma did not die?
The second poem, "Orpheus", sets the tone for the entire collection. It ends with the chilling words: "And all I know about Eurydice / is that she died. My every other fact about her is about him." Safia goes against this (literary) tradition of putting men in the center and condemning women to the margins. She makes it her purpose to uncover and recover women's stories. Girls That Never Die is a collection about all the Eurydices, from different cultures and times, it's about women.
In "Infibulation Study", Safia discusses the shame surrounding the topic of female genital mutilation: "I will begin with the assumption that we each continue to have a clitoris. False. We do not talk about this. I will begin with speculation about our mothers, that each continues to have a clitoris. False. We are never to ask." In a second poem of the same name, Safia's words won't fail to bring a chill down your spine: "which knives are for the animals which ones are for the girls". FGM is a hard topic to talk about, even as a women who is completely unrelated to it (knowing no one who went through this), I find it incredibly hard to talk, or even think about. It's just such a horrible practice. Reading Warsan Shire's memoir (Brief an meine Mutter) also made me aware that this "tradition" is often passed on through the women (mainly mothers and aunties) in one's family: they are victim and aggressor at the same time.
In "Pomegranate", Safia accuses her family and society: "Because I am their daughter my body is not mine. / I was raised like fruit, unpeeled & then peeled. Raised / to bleed in some man's bed." This is a sentiment that is echoed throughout the collection. Safia hates the way women are seen as men's property. She takes you on her journey since her early childhood dies and coming to terms, and then rebelling against that "fact".
The titular poem "Girls That Never Die" is urgent and one of my favorites of the entire collection; it reveals what it's like to be a girl, to obey, to cover yourself but at the end of the day all of that doesn't matter: "i was a girl & like the girls i knew / i bruised i bled i died".
But Safia wouldn't be Safia if she, on top of all these feminist themes, also explored what it's like to be stuck between two cultures, in her case: American and Sudanese. In "Terra Nullius", she explains how she and her family came to the US in the first place: "To be born in the country of my origins would be to have killed my mother. Suggestion of Cairo short miles away & with better hospitals. She shakes her head. America. I uproot her & she crosses the water."
Like many immigrants, theirs wasn't a choice entirely born out of free will, but of necessity. Her mother needed medical care that couldn't be provided then and there, which is why she moved to the US to birth her daughter there. Through Safia's debut collection and her novel in verse, I know what a struggle this split/ double identity is for Safia. It's something she always talks about; how she feels like she doesn't belong to any nation, if at all, she belongs to people, those who love her.
One of my favorite lines in the entire collection is from the poem "Border/Softer", in it, Safia poignantly asks: "& isn't a map only a joke we all agreed into a fact?"
In "Profanity", Safia confesses: "i am not polite i am only inarticulate / overproud of my little arsenal". This is something most bilingual kids who aren't fluent in their "mother" tongue can relate to. It's weird growing up with/ in a language and still not being as fluent and comfortable in it as your parents and/or friends. Funnily enough, I often feel impolite when I'm speaking French because I say so little and don't partake too much in conversation.
Overall, Girls That Never Die is a poetry collection I would highly recommend. It has become one of my favorites and it has further solidified Safia Elhillo as an auto-buy author for me! No matter what she'll publish in the future, I will be there!
Back in the day, I used to read a lot more modern poetry than I do now. I feel like that era has ended (for me). I tend to stick with classic poetry these days. Only Danez Smith and Safia Elhillo manage to make me crawl out of my dusty hole to pick up their new collections!
After having read (and reread) Safia's debut YA novel in verse home is not a country and not being overly impressed with it, I feared that her sophomore poetry collection wouldn't do it for me anymore. After I saw the spectacular cover design (shout out to photographer Hassan Hajjaj), my expectations rose slightly. When I finally held the book in my hands, in mid-July, I took it to the beach with me and read most of it there – lying in the sand, with the sound of water, children playing and adults chattering in the background. It was lovely.
Reading Girls That Never Die was a totally immersive experience. From the first to the last page, Safia invited me into her world... the world of a Brown muslim woman, who navigates between Sudan and the United States of America, who lives in both the English and Arabic language, who believes in Allah but not in covering herself and shaming women for their sexuality, who loves their family, yet is in constant struggle with it.
In many ways, Safia's sophomore collection is a lot more honest and raw than her debut. She explores (her) feminine shame and the violence that she and her sistas (and mothers...) go through simply because they are women. She doesn't hold back. She explores the topics of female genital mutilation, the shame surrounding it and how it's a taboo topic, even amongst women, she explores her own body, what it means to her and how it is perceived by other, especially men (whether their family members of strangers... Safia often feels like her body doesn't belong to her).
But Safia also writes about liberation, she envisions magical realist rebellions, she dreams of power and autonomy. You could say she truly does reshape the world: women escape their stonings by birds that carry the rocks away; slain girls grow into two, like the hydra of lore, sprouting too numerous to ever be eradicated; circles of women are deemed holy, protected. She daringly asks: "what if i will not die / what will govern me then"? What would happen if all those girls who are subjected to violence and trauma did not die?
The second poem, "Orpheus", sets the tone for the entire collection. It ends with the chilling words: "And all I know about Eurydice / is that she died. My every other fact about her is about him." Safia goes against this (literary) tradition of putting men in the center and condemning women to the margins. She makes it her purpose to uncover and recover women's stories. Girls That Never Die is a collection about all the Eurydices, from different cultures and times, it's about women.
In "Infibulation Study", Safia discusses the shame surrounding the topic of female genital mutilation: "I will begin with the assumption that we each continue to have a clitoris. False. We do not talk about this. I will begin with speculation about our mothers, that each continues to have a clitoris. False. We are never to ask." In a second poem of the same name, Safia's words won't fail to bring a chill down your spine: "which knives are for the animals which ones are for the girls". FGM is a hard topic to talk about, even as a women who is completely unrelated to it (knowing no one who went through this), I find it incredibly hard to talk, or even think about. It's just such a horrible practice. Reading Warsan Shire's memoir (Brief an meine Mutter) also made me aware that this "tradition" is often passed on through the women (mainly mothers and aunties) in one's family: they are victim and aggressor at the same time.
In "Pomegranate", Safia accuses her family and society: "Because I am their daughter my body is not mine. / I was raised like fruit, unpeeled & then peeled. Raised / to bleed in some man's bed." This is a sentiment that is echoed throughout the collection. Safia hates the way women are seen as men's property. She takes you on her journey since her early childhood dies and coming to terms, and then rebelling against that "fact".
The titular poem "Girls That Never Die" is urgent and one of my favorites of the entire collection; it reveals what it's like to be a girl, to obey, to cover yourself but at the end of the day all of that doesn't matter: "i was a girl & like the girls i knew / i bruised i bled i died".
But Safia wouldn't be Safia if she, on top of all these feminist themes, also explored what it's like to be stuck between two cultures, in her case: American and Sudanese. In "Terra Nullius", she explains how she and her family came to the US in the first place: "To be born in the country of my origins would be to have killed my mother. Suggestion of Cairo short miles away & with better hospitals. She shakes her head. America. I uproot her & she crosses the water."
Like many immigrants, theirs wasn't a choice entirely born out of free will, but of necessity. Her mother needed medical care that couldn't be provided then and there, which is why she moved to the US to birth her daughter there. Through Safia's debut collection and her novel in verse, I know what a struggle this split/ double identity is for Safia. It's something she always talks about; how she feels like she doesn't belong to any nation, if at all, she belongs to people, those who love her.
One of my favorite lines in the entire collection is from the poem "Border/Softer", in it, Safia poignantly asks: "& isn't a map only a joke we all agreed into a fact?"
In "Profanity", Safia confesses: "i am not polite i am only inarticulate / overproud of my little arsenal". This is something most bilingual kids who aren't fluent in their "mother" tongue can relate to. It's weird growing up with/ in a language and still not being as fluent and comfortable in it as your parents and/or friends. Funnily enough, I often feel impolite when I'm speaking French because I say so little and don't partake too much in conversation.
Overall, Girls That Never Die is a poetry collection I would highly recommend. It has become one of my favorites and it has further solidified Safia Elhillo as an auto-buy author for me! No matter what she'll publish in the future, I will be there!
March 16, 2024
so good and so gorgeous and so heartbreakingly vulnerable. honored to say i've gotten to experience safia's poetry in person—and it is just as, if not more, mesmerizing.
some faves:
—
—
some faves:
hours before, the night outside is black as my grandmother’s / hair, its newborn moon in Sagittarius, & in the Maryland / house my mother is twenty-three behind a winning hand of cards / as the water darkens the length of her skirt.
—
my mother is almost my mother now, / darker color of the noontime sun.
—
I loved it enough to stay gone when all the others went home, moved on, unlatched their shuttered houses, beat the carpets & kissed their neighbors & cried.
Read
July 27, 2022I have a nice monthly gift subscription to poetry books as selected by a particular employee at a New York City bookstore. The good news is, every month, she chooses a book by a historically less represented voice. The bad news is, every month, she chooses a book by a historically less represented voice. To the point where I can sympathize with people who grew a bit weary of reading dead white males in that certain themes repeat themselves over and over and you seek more variety.
Author Safia Elhillo is "Sudanese by way of D.C." and a lot of her poems have to do with her roots, religion, and culture. Particularly moving are those that touch on the tyranny of male dominance in her culture and her resistance to that. I wanted to think that this is something American readers would have little experience with, but then I checked myself, remembering how the Senate, in particular, is ruled by old men happy to make rules for everyone, including women (ditto to Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence the Clown on the formerly-Supreme Court, with their little stunt vis-a-vis banning abortion for reasons of theocracy -- they choose the religion, of course).
One thing I could have used less of was blood. If these poems were tossed into a word use program, I'm sure blood, bleed, and bleeding would come up dozens and dozens of times, mostly as related to matters female. It's more a statement on me than Safia, I guess, to say that one or two such themed pieces would have been enough. It also hints that this book might have stronger appeal to women and fans of intimate confessional poetry. ("Dear Diary, what a day it's been.")
Still, though I didn't love love love this collection, I did admire Elhillo's talent. Here, to give you a sample of her ability, is an example of a poem touching on both men and blood (a twofer!):
Pomegranate
Because I am their daughter my body is not mine.
I was raised like fruit, unpeeled & then peeled. Raised
to bleed in some man's bed. I was given my name
& with it my instructions. Pure. Pure.
& is it wasted on me? Every moment I do not touch
myself, every moment I leave my body on it back
to be a wife while I go somewhere above the room.
I return to the soil & search. I know it's there. Buried
shallow, wrapped in rags dark with old & forgotten rust,
their discarded part. Buried without ceremony,
buried like fallen seeds.
I wonder about the trees: Date palms veined
through the fruit with the copper taste of cutting.
Guavas that, when slit, purple dark as raw meat.
I have to wonder, of course, about the blood orange,
about the pomegranate, splayed open, like something
that once was alive & remains.
Author Safia Elhillo is "Sudanese by way of D.C." and a lot of her poems have to do with her roots, religion, and culture. Particularly moving are those that touch on the tyranny of male dominance in her culture and her resistance to that. I wanted to think that this is something American readers would have little experience with, but then I checked myself, remembering how the Senate, in particular, is ruled by old men happy to make rules for everyone, including women (ditto to Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence the Clown on the formerly-Supreme Court, with their little stunt vis-a-vis banning abortion for reasons of theocracy -- they choose the religion, of course).
One thing I could have used less of was blood. If these poems were tossed into a word use program, I'm sure blood, bleed, and bleeding would come up dozens and dozens of times, mostly as related to matters female. It's more a statement on me than Safia, I guess, to say that one or two such themed pieces would have been enough. It also hints that this book might have stronger appeal to women and fans of intimate confessional poetry. ("Dear Diary, what a day it's been.")
Still, though I didn't love love love this collection, I did admire Elhillo's talent. Here, to give you a sample of her ability, is an example of a poem touching on both men and blood (a twofer!):
Pomegranate
Because I am their daughter my body is not mine.
I was raised like fruit, unpeeled & then peeled. Raised
to bleed in some man's bed. I was given my name
& with it my instructions. Pure. Pure.
& is it wasted on me? Every moment I do not touch
myself, every moment I leave my body on it back
to be a wife while I go somewhere above the room.
I return to the soil & search. I know it's there. Buried
shallow, wrapped in rags dark with old & forgotten rust,
their discarded part. Buried without ceremony,
buried like fallen seeds.
I wonder about the trees: Date palms veined
through the fruit with the copper taste of cutting.
Guavas that, when slit, purple dark as raw meat.
I have to wonder, of course, about the blood orange,
about the pomegranate, splayed open, like something
that once was alive & remains.
November 13, 2024
Sealey Challenge 2024: 1/31
What a way to start this month of poetry - this was simply SENSATIONAL!!
What a way to start this month of poetry - this was simply SENSATIONAL!!
November 7, 2023
Honestly a little embarrassed by how long it took me to read this — a beautiful collection about Muslim womanhood, the limbo of being both visibly Sudanese but unable to speak arabic, and her own personal life experiences. Audiobook was absolutely excellent
February 1, 2024
beautiful, raw, tender & heartbreaking. i love poetry that makes you feel seen in the most terrible & deepest parts of you that you thought you would never be able to talk about but then see the words spelled out perfectly in front of you & think one day you might change your mind. ‘everything we allowed to be done to us in silence. to ask for help would be to speak and of course we never spoke’ i’m itching to get my hands on a physical copy so that i can annotate & read & reread every time i am sad or lonely or need to feel comforted & understood the same way i reach for bluets by maggie nelson
April 4, 2024
“This is the book I was most afraid to write,” she says first in her Acknowledgements.
Very worth reading. Warning— violence on women and girls, oppression.
Isn’t that what is?
Also a sense of ancestry and family and Sudan where the poet Safia Elhillo is from. It is her heritage and culture despite being born in the U.S.
i am asked to take down the photo
i am asked to anonymize my lover
stop showing my teeth
cover my knees
shave my legs
stop wearing red
start wearing makeup
stop wearing lipstick
stop being photographed at night
people will talk
what will they think?
what will they do
with my name?
∴
[arabic word written] /bint nas/ n. daughter of People; girl with a Name; unbroken yolk as reputation…
Just a short excerpt! The things women are told to do, how to be. Under terrible penalties. It’s going on today! There is much more and feelings grow immense.
Very worth reading. Warning— violence on women and girls, oppression.
Isn’t that what is?
Also a sense of ancestry and family and Sudan where the poet Safia Elhillo is from. It is her heritage and culture despite being born in the U.S.
i am asked to take down the photo
i am asked to anonymize my lover
stop showing my teeth
cover my knees
shave my legs
stop wearing red
start wearing makeup
stop wearing lipstick
stop being photographed at night
people will talk
what will they think?
what will they do
with my name?
∴
[arabic word written] /bint nas/ n. daughter of People; girl with a Name; unbroken yolk as reputation…
Just a short excerpt! The things women are told to do, how to be. Under terrible penalties. It’s going on today! There is much more and feelings grow immense.
June 30, 2022
5 stars
I became a devoted fan of Elhillo's poetry upon the release of the last collection, and I could not wait to jump into this grouping. At a time when misogyny seems even more prevalent than usual, this is exactly the reading I needed to feed my soul. I'm certain many readers will have similar reactions.
Elhillo's work focuses on the enduring experiences and identities of women and girls, and the scenes will serve as effective windows and mirrors for every reader. The juxtapositions between traditional and contemporary, welcomed and traumatic, and formative and fringe create powerful through lines in this series of particularly impacting works.
I'm already looking forward to imbuing upcoming syllabi with poems from this collection. Elhillo continues to solidify a clear, deserved, accessible, and visible place in the (finally expanding a little) group of modern poetic voices.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and One World for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I became a devoted fan of Elhillo's poetry upon the release of the last collection, and I could not wait to jump into this grouping. At a time when misogyny seems even more prevalent than usual, this is exactly the reading I needed to feed my soul. I'm certain many readers will have similar reactions.
Elhillo's work focuses on the enduring experiences and identities of women and girls, and the scenes will serve as effective windows and mirrors for every reader. The juxtapositions between traditional and contemporary, welcomed and traumatic, and formative and fringe create powerful through lines in this series of particularly impacting works.
I'm already looking forward to imbuing upcoming syllabi with poems from this collection. Elhillo continues to solidify a clear, deserved, accessible, and visible place in the (finally expanding a little) group of modern poetic voices.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and One World for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
June 22, 2022
Mesmerizing
August 26, 2022
this was the kind of poetry i don’t get 😅
September 17, 2023
"a shame / a shame"
August 15, 2024
This book makes me want to go back to other poetry books I’ve read and lower their rating because those books are not this book and this book is incredible.
Read
January 3, 2025‘what small freedoms could i exchange for my name for my Name’
August 9, 2022
Loved it
August 2, 2024
4☆ — sudanese muslim girlhood in all its quiet hurt, loud anger, and rawness. this is my first time reading safia elhillo and i really enjoyed what she had to offer <3
August 10, 2025
I think that this is the poetry book I needed to get me back into reading poetry. This was an achingly and hauntingly beautiful collection. Elhillo writes about about the experience of an immigrant, specifically of a Muslim girl navigating the waters between home (culture, shame, religion, assault) and the outside (racism, microaggressions, western 'rebellion'). She uses a myriad of formats to do so, each piece equally gutting and tender. The structures of each piece varied and that piqued interest, keeping me hooked for each new piece and struck me speechless with the intimate tone of grief and trauma hidden between the lines.
September 27, 2022
In Girls That Never Die, Safia Elhillo writes about the experiences of being an African Muslim girl/woman living in the diaspora, in a pretty similar fashion to Warsan Shire.
And though I found Safia's poetry a bit more difficult to understand at times, compared to Warsan's poetry, I thought it was just as moving.
I really enjoyed reading the poems that are written in two columns and can be read both vertically and horizontally. I don't think I've come across that form before.
I read all the poems twice and found that I got more from them that way, so this is definitely a collection that begs to be read over and over again.
And though I found Safia's poetry a bit more difficult to understand at times, compared to Warsan's poetry, I thought it was just as moving.
I really enjoyed reading the poems that are written in two columns and can be read both vertically and horizontally. I don't think I've come across that form before.
I read all the poems twice and found that I got more from them that way, so this is definitely a collection that begs to be read over and over again.
July 19, 2022
This is now the top contender for my favorite book of 2022. Impeccably written and structured, beautiful and heart-wrenching and absolutely brilliant.
September 7, 2024
Needs a reread asap, this book will take a while to absorb, but felt like one I’ve been waiting to find.
From “taxonomy”:
because i want to contain my own solution
i should want as well to dissolve”
From “profanity”:
“but what word can i use to call my own
how without disgrace
can i name my innocent parts
my wounds
I am saying if asked in arabic
i could not tell you where i open”
From “border/softer”:
“& then how boundless can i make my life
which for all its smallness still exhausts me
balancing act of all my margins all my conjugations
of cannot if i live through the night i will bleed
into all my edges until i am no longer a strike
of some careless man’s pen”
From “taxonomy”:
because i want to contain my own solution
i should want as well to dissolve”
From “profanity”:
“but what word can i use to call my own
how without disgrace
can i name my innocent parts
my wounds
I am saying if asked in arabic
i could not tell you where i open”
From “border/softer”:
“& then how boundless can i make my life
which for all its smallness still exhausts me
balancing act of all my margins all my conjugations
of cannot if i live through the night i will bleed
into all my edges until i am no longer a strike
of some careless man’s pen”
March 14, 2025
I randomly picked this off the library shelf just from the title and cover alone not knowing what to expect at all. I found I was pleasantly surprised by this collection despite being a little nervous about the content.
I recently read "Good Grief, the Ground" which I feel like is very similar to this book in the ways it discusses adolescent girlhood, albeit the traumas and histories are quite different. Overall, these poems are rich and rife with heart-wrenching, but beautiful and necessary language.
I would definitely seek out more from this author!
I recently read "Good Grief, the Ground" which I feel like is very similar to this book in the ways it discusses adolescent girlhood, albeit the traumas and histories are quite different. Overall, these poems are rich and rife with heart-wrenching, but beautiful and necessary language.
I would definitely seek out more from this author!
September 2, 2022
Amazing, powerful, haunting and still hopeful. Author’s reading is so moving. Some poems had me struggling for air, waiting for word of a young girl’s survival. Title poem was the most striking poem I’ve read in years. Highly recommend, especially audio version.
Read
April 30, 2024such a vulnerable and powerful collection
“i do not have the verbs for what i need for her.
i needed them myself & was not protected.
i want to make ash of this world that did not protect us”
“i do not have the verbs for what i need for her.
i needed them myself & was not protected.
i want to make ash of this world that did not protect us”
January 21, 2025
3.25. very interestingly structured but didn't really get it... i should probably have read it slower + checked the notes on the poems
July 23, 2022
Safia always speaks my unspoken fears, aches, longings. gives me new language, new bones for my insides. affirms me, exists with me, makes my lonely less lonely. my teenage uneasiness & turmoils & tensions, she breathes life into them. my ghostly paranoias turned flesh anew. very freeing, always
I read "The Animal" to anyone who will listen, a perfect poem, tears every time <3
I read "The Animal" to anyone who will listen, a perfect poem, tears every time <3
January 20, 2023
I first discovered Safia in 2017 on YouTube and I memorized her 16 minute compilation of poems called “Alien Suite” and I have been in LOVE with her writing since. She writes in this sort of nostalgic way that makes me feel like I’ve experienced what she experienced or that I am one of the girls that she’s friends with in Cairo.
Although in one of her works, she called nostalgia a monster, which is definitely true. Her work still gives me that nostalgic vibe, warm fuzzy feelings of longing 💕
Although in one of her works, she called nostalgia a monster, which is definitely true. Her work still gives me that nostalgic vibe, warm fuzzy feelings of longing 💕
May 25, 2022
A collection from a Muslim poet about shame, girlhood, womanhood, culture, and complex family relationships. There are pieces where Elhillo uses [brackets around words] or says there aren’t words for this, and it’s like she’s chaffing against the limitations of language itself. Still, the emotion pours through.
My favorite poems are the ones where she imagines different endings for women who have experienced gendered violence. It feels like she’s wading through grief and discovering new possibilities.
cw: gendered violence, sexual assault, genital mutilation, honor killing
Thank you NetGalley and Random House for an arc for an unbiased review.
My favorite poems are the ones where she imagines different endings for women who have experienced gendered violence. It feels like she’s wading through grief and discovering new possibilities.
cw: gendered violence, sexual assault, genital mutilation, honor killing
Thank you NetGalley and Random House for an arc for an unbiased review.
April 15, 2022
Thank you to Random Houee and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!
Available July 12 2022
Safia Elhillo speaks the language of my soul, of the girl who lived in a hot country with noisy streets and rooftop gardens. Her work is effervescent, floating on the cusp of girlhood and womanhood, dancing delicately between the two. I loved every single poem, for every girl who refuses to die no matter what the world throws at her.
Available July 12 2022
Safia Elhillo speaks the language of my soul, of the girl who lived in a hot country with noisy streets and rooftop gardens. Her work is effervescent, floating on the cusp of girlhood and womanhood, dancing delicately between the two. I loved every single poem, for every girl who refuses to die no matter what the world throws at her.
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