DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW.

by Noor Hindi

Overview

What is political poetry? How does history become lived experience? What does it mean to bear witness through writing?

Noor Hindi’s poems explore colonialism, religion, patriarchy and everything in between with sharp wit and innovative precision. Layered to reflect the intersections of her identity, while constantly interrogating this identity itself, her writing combines lyrical beauty with political urgency.

This collection is ultimately a provocation―on trauma, on art, on what it takes to change the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642597233
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	05/31/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	618,481
File size:	884 KB

About the Author

Noor Hindi (she/her/hers) is a Palestinian-American poet and reporter. Hindi is the Equity and Inclusion Reporter for The Devil Strip Magazine.

Table of Contents

I.

Self-Interrogation 1

Thirst 2

In Which the White Woman on My Thesis Defense Asks Me about Witness 4

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying 5

I Once Looked in a Mirror but Couldn't See My Body 6

Breaking [News] 7

Palestine 8

Broken Light Bulb Flickering Away 10

Self-Portrait as Arab/Muslim Teenager in an All-White High School 11

Good Muslims Are All Around Us 13

Breaking [News] 15

A Day, A Life; When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident? 16

Grief Symphony 18

Breaking [News] 19

I Buried My Brother Last Winter 21

Breaking [News] 22

All My Plants Are Dead 23

II American Beings

Confession 27

A Prayer 28

A Question 29

USCIS Trip #1: A Revision 30

A Quick Study of the Word Existence 31

Tapping on the Glass 32

USCIS Trip #2: Violation 33

The Dream 34

USCIS Trip #3: A Test 35

A Chaos of Semantics 36

A Home 37

USCIS Trip #4: A Photo 38

III.

Poem in Which My Mother Tells Me Not to Get a Pap Smear Because It Might Tear My Nonexistent Hymen 41

Virginity for Sale 42

In a Dream, I Get Married in an Abandoned Mall 44

Dangerous Business 46

I Should Have Broken Up with My Ex 48

Summertime 49

I Call My Mother from the Moon 50

The She 11 of a Cactus Fruit 52

Ode 56

Dabke 57

IV.

Pledging Allegiance 61

Acknowledgments 65

Notes 66

Editorial Reviews

Noor Hindi wields her poetry with passion and righteous anger in this powerful, striking collection that touches the heart and the head, the body and the mind.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Committed

“In this powerful debut, Noor Hindi's searing poems navigate memory, violence, and inheritance with a candid and critical eye. Filled with heartache, tenderness, love, anger, and humor, they interrogate what it’s like to be woman, Palestinian, and American in today’s world.”
—Zeina Hashem Beck, author of O

“Urgent and searing, these poems are both jocular and declamatory in all the most memorable of ways–delivering crackles of energy long after you close the book.”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders

“Armed with a journalist's heart and a poet's mind, Noor Hindi has written blazingly towards a future where "what's real/is us.”
—Tarfia Faizullah, author of Registers of Illuminated Villages

“This collection takes in history both unfolded and unfolding, yet still barrels toward the light. Where has this book been all my life? But also? Here it is. And we are so lucky.”
—Jess Rizkallah, author of the magic my body becomes

"Scalding, humorous, unbearable, revolutionary, Noor Hindi's poetry collection embodies a blind wager that poems might contribute to rendering the impassive American mind alive, at last, to Palestine."
—Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation

From the Publisher