Nationally touring poet, performer, and writer Fatimah Asghar is “almost always in-between two places.” Her parents were born in Kashmir and Pakistan. They moved to the US, and died when she was five.
In Corinne Segal’s article, Asghar describes her “brokenness” as being an opportunity to use language in new ways and to address stories at the margins, including her own.
I think that’s what poetry can do, which is why I really believe in it.
Asghar is an orphan who uses spoken word to deal with being Pakistani living in diaspora and being an orphan.
Being a part of any kind of diaspora is such a beautifully haunting and strange experience, to kind of constantly be working back toward a place where your family has left, or were exiled from, or can’t go back to. That’s a kind of orphaning in its own self.
Listen to her perform her poem, “Super Orphan” here.
