Word Count: 500
Upon reading the poem “the women in my family” written by Fatimah Asghar, specific elements that immediately stood out to me were the profound sense of diaspora and loss. The first stanza begins with “their names have been lost,” immediately introducing the loss she’s endured from not remembering the women from the generations before her. This creates a sense of urgency and longing to look into her history specifically, and may even prompt the reader to question their own history. Continuing reading, some lines I found somewhat difficult to read initially came from the line “we bent our knees to worship the gods of the city, the gods with jaguar eyes.” I found this difficult to analyze because of its complexity. However, I think this could initially connect to the meaning of forced assimilation (we bent our knees to worship) that a multitude of indigenous and non-American people come to endure upon starting a new life, which is not in their homeland.
The line, “ what was her. name? i ask the room of my uncles & am met with disinterest. where did she come. from? & I receive silence. that must be,” showcases how in many cultures around the world, it is prevalent and simply routine to not have information regarding past women in families. Specifically, the disinterest highlights how the identities of the women are not deemed important enough to preserve, hurting the author and even the readers in a culture of patriarchy that is systemically encouraged, creating a diaspora where the legacies of women are discarded and forgotten.
I have a good understanding of the following stanza “& rivers, the promises my ancestors made to the spirits & then betrayed when they fled” because of the similar uprooting my family had endured during the Syrian Civil War in 2011. It’s difficult, and even as someone who didn’t necessarily leave Syria but still experienced the trauma of loss, survivor’s guilt is prevalent in the refugee community. To accept an offer for a safer life when so many others were not given the opportunity (even people in your own family) is difficult to live with. Similarly, Asghar relates to this by referencing her ancestors fleeing and breaking the promise they made to the spirits. In my analysis of this piece, I believe that the spirits would be a reference to the homeland. Specifically, the connection to your homeland and how it remains a part of you, no matter where you end up in this lifetime. This poem can overall be connected to a multitude of family histories across cultures where stories and struggles may be intentionally or untientally buried, creating a cycle where later generations are forced to pick up the broken shards in an attempt to put the pieces on their own identity and fill the diaspora in an attempt to understand their past and pick up the fragments of a unanswered questions.
Cited picture that reflects the poem’s central or controlling idea
