BLOOD ORANGE by Yaffa As
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“it is neither / the sun nor the moon / moving / that shows them / intersecting / it is the earth moving… we are the moving piece”
TITLE—Blood Orange
AUTHOR—Yaffa As
PUBLISHED—2023
PUBLISHER—Meraj Publishing
GENRE—poetry
SETTING—in diaspora
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Palestinian & in diaspora, queer / trans / Arab / Muslim identities, intersectional liberation, survivor’s guilt, Indigenous movements & history, land back, anger & love, hope & grief, astronomical phenomenon & celestial alignments
“if i was assigned / female at birth / would i be able to / die in Palestine? / is there any / part of me / i can sacrifice / for a free / Palestine?”
Summary:
“Blood Orange is a highly emotional, important and timely poetry collection by Mx. Yaffa (They/She), a trans Muslim displaced Indigenous Palestinian. Their writings probe the yearning for home, belonging, mental health, queerness, transness, and other dimensions of marginalization while nurturing dreams of utopia against the background of ongoing displacement and genocide of indigenous Palestinians.”
My thoughts:
Wow. What a fantastic little collection. It took me a few poems to get into the particular style that Yaffa uses & once I realized where I was & where Yaffa was coming from & going, it felt like having cold water splashed in my face.
All at once the syntax-less, fragmented form felt so much like words uttered between gasps of breath as though the speaker was running for their life or fighting for air while drowning or sobbing themselves sick or shaking with fury. Words whispered in the dark by someone who is at the end of their thread, their energy, their patience, their hope & yet knows they cannot stop, they cannot choose to be anyone or be anywhere other than who & where they are—that they don’t want to choose that thing, that lie that won’t “save” them anyway. How much they love themselves, love their heritage, love their identity, love their community, love their life! and how mercilessly & unjustly they are ostracized & their very existence denied time & time again.
“if joy is / revolutionary / how much ecstasy / do i need / to free Palestine?”
My favorite poems were “Blood Orange,” “Healthy,” “Relinquish,” “Marginalized” & “Moving Piece”—though it was really hard to narrow it down to those five & there are only like 30 poems in the whole book.
I would recommend this book to all readers. The poems are very graspable & I think anyone would be able to find something that resonates with them or to learn in this collection. This book is best read humbly, compassionately, often—as lesson & as reminder.
Final note: So happy to have found this book recommended in the #QueerPalestineReadathon!
“we are not / the ones who / take land / back / it is land / that takes us”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Further Reading—
YOU CAN BE THE LAST LEAF by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR by Mosab Abu Toha
DEAR GOD, DEAR BONES, DEAR YELLOW by Noor Hindi
HOME BODY by Rupi Kaur
WILD EMBERS: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty, by Nikita Gill
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