Moving between the scriptures of the Qur'an and the Bible, these poems explore the complexities and spectacles of gender, faith, and family by unraveling the age-old idea that seeing is believing.
Stirring ... Blends confessional verse, mythology, and spiritual realism to convey a contemporary Muslim woman’s complex relationship with her religion and its patriarchal legacy ... Daringly grapples with embracing tradition while breaking free from prescriptive ideas about womanhood ... Vivid, morally complex.
I will go back to them because of their unsettling ambivalence ... And these poems are tender and wise, first and foremost, by virtue of their flickering ... Taken whole, does love the reach and flicker of evocation. It loves word play and metaphor. It loves stories that evoke other stories, lives that evoke other lives.
Poised ... Wordplay, floral metaphors, and multiple ghazals make for dazzling language. Ali's poetry, both elegant and visceral, gives women's bodily and spiritual experiences primacy.
