Don't Tell Them

by Maysan Nasser

“Don't Tell Them” is a poetry collection that tackles identity, love, sexuality, mental health and existential angst. In this collection, Maysan tackles taboos and issues she is scared to disclose to the world, hence the title of the book. She hopes the launch of this book will be a form of letting go of the issues that she has written about. She hopes that it will serve as a friend to those who can relate, as well as a friendly reminder that they are not alone in their internal wars.

100 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2018

Reviews

[Elianne El-Amyouni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maysan's ability to capture the rawness of the human experience is unparalleled. Her language is both kind and harsh, it takes you to the highest realms of yourself without ever looking down at you, while simultaneously taking you down the rabbit hole of existential dread without fatigue. Don't Tell Them is the labyrinthine journey of a day told backwards, waxing and waning with the moon, removing and reinserting you into a time you never knew you were a part of it. Read this book when you're ready to nakedly face the reality of your own reflective existence.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I can't be thoroughly objective about this book, because I had the honor of helping the author to edit it. But what I can say is why I was so excited to participate in the project. It's extremely rare that I have the pleasure of believing in a young author's future as much as I believe in Maysan's. Even already, in her debut collection, she exhibits such a thirst for the trajectory of her own voice, such a capacity for the gravity that pushes her reality through her pen, that I feel compelled to do anything I can to encourage her to keep writing. Maysan is a fearless narrator, a confessor of the universal sins, a deep-sea diver, an astronaut of inner space. She bleeds from the edge of her own knife, and offers herself up as a sacrifice on the altar of poetry. She is willing, not just to share her own pain with us, but to share everyone's pain, and to swallow more of it into her than most of us have the courage to stomach. She is both a vessel and a vector. She carries the collective trauma on her back, in her guts, along her arms, in her eyes, and she gradually disperses it onto the waves of light that emit from a core of strength that resides so deep in her that she can't even always find it for herself. She turns herself inside out. She writes with courage. She does the work to collapse the universe around herself and become its black hole. And the light that she finds in her darkness, she is willing to shine on us all. In short, she does the real work of the poet. Not just the work on the page, but the work that takes place in lonely silent corners, and the work that swirls through raging storms of inner terror, and the work that it can sometimes be just to contain what others are not yet ready to see. She does the work of fighting wars within herself, and negotiating fragile peace treaties, and then letting us read them. And if every poet went into that internal battle with as much valor as Maysan, we just might stand the chance of turning the tide in a much bigger war. I'd carry my sword next to her any day.

[Mona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure. Naked. Honest. Poetry at it's best.