One of my favorite poetry collections

This lovely book carefully explores what it means to live between two worlds as an Arab-American millennial. The way Rizkallah crafts the most beautiful imagery points to the artistic and sensitive way in which she perceives the world around her:

“I was born an arm with a hand at both ends
taking both lands back at once, like they’re mine.”

I loved the way that she effortlessly interspersed Arabic words, expressions, and cultural signposts in her poems, which feels at times like she is speaking to one who understands, or is writing to herself in an intimate and private way. As someone who knows both languages, it’s a delight to come across this because it mirrors the way a bilingual brain works, meshing the two worlds together in an effort to communicate more holistically. With a doting attention to origin and identity, she invites us to understand the connecting lines between generations, exemplified by the celebration of parents and grandparents, as well as the “Ghada says” segments in the book. I’d like to think that this is the voice of an aunt passing down knowledge and advice that is at times hilarious, and others somber. Poetry in the Arab world is often an oratory practice meant to preserve cultural memory, and in this way Rizkallah adds her voice to the throng of poets that reveal the rich depth of Arab experience.

This is another one of those books that feels like it uses the slam poet form to present another ethnic category, this time Arab women, or to be more specific, Lebanese women. It's got poems spoken, aphoristically, by a poetically conceived grandmother, and poems about family and growing up and about being a modern woman. It's a collection that reaches to make connections to other women's cultural experience and to speak alongside them. But it rarely felt like it was finding its own voice, more like it was saying (no irony intended) "me, too." There are good poems here, but nothing that really stood out to me as distinctively in its own language.

I did like this, I enjoyed most of her poems but there were a few that were quite dense and didn’t make much sense to me.

This is a no holds barred meditation on Lebanese/immigrant/female identity, homeland, loss, and power. Rizkallah touches on the conflict of the diaspora. She doesn't shy away from saying what needs to be said, and each page dips with dialogue and image that just hurts.

What a gorgeous and deeply moving collection. The burden of inheritance as a symphony. I really feel connected to these poems.