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Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha
29 reviews
serendipitysbooks's review
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
hings You May Find Hidden in My Ear could be described as eye-opening - but only to anyone who has been living under a rock and somehow managed to avoid all of the images coming out of Gaza in the past couple of months. What it is is heart-wrenching and powerful, an indication of how conflict and violence in the region have impacted the poet, first as a child, then a young man, and later as a father. What should be unimaginable was his everyday reality before he was able to leave. Highly recommended - for both the poetry and the political context.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Colonisation, and War
careinthelibrary's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
I thought this was great. The poet wrote in such a sensory way that I felt drawn into the space he created. The smells, sensations, sounds. There's a poem that references teeth chattering that I really felt, for example. Small but mighty.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Genocide, Violence, Colonisation, Death, Gun violence, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and War
cleansetolovers's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
This debut collection absolutely blew me away. Toha’s gift for verse is unparalleled. It is a sad, beautiful, horrifying, wonderful look at his life in Gaza, first, as a child and then a father. I’m gonna be thinking about these pieces for a long time, and the interview at the end really helped tie the poetry together. I am normally not much of a poetry person, but this really is causing me to reevaluate my relationship to the genre. A true must read during these horrifying times.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Confinement, Death, and Genocide
puttingwingsonwords's review
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.5
This was my main read for #ReadPalestineWeek. I also finished the Activestills book I was already reading, which I posted about previously, and started Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis.
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is an impressive poetry collection about life in Palestine, and specifically Gaza.
‘In Gaza, / breathing is a task, / smiling is performing / plastic surgery / on one’s own face / and rising in the morning, / trying to survive / another day, is coming back / from the dead.’
Abu Toha’s poetry zooms in on mundane things and shows how they are twisted in a life under occupation and under siege; but also how they are a source of beauty, however small.
‘Through it all, the strawberries have never stopped growing.’
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is an impressive poetry collection about life in Palestine, and specifically Gaza.
‘In Gaza, / breathing is a task, / smiling is performing / plastic surgery / on one’s own face / and rising in the morning, / trying to survive / another day, is coming back / from the dead.’
Abu Toha’s poetry zooms in on mundane things and shows how they are twisted in a life under occupation and under siege; but also how they are a source of beauty, however small.
‘Through it all, the strawberries have never stopped growing.’
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation and Death
Moderate: Child death, Violence, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Medical content
freckled_frog_boi's review against another edition
“On a starless night,
I toss and turn.
The earth shakes, and
I fall out of bed.
I look out my window. The house
next door no longer
stands. It’s lying like an old carpet
on the floor of the earth,
trampled by missiles, fat slippers
flying off legless feet.
I never knew my neighbors still had that small TV,
that the old painting still hung on their walls,
that their cat had kittens.”
I toss and turn.
The earth shakes, and
I fall out of bed.
I look out my window. The house
next door no longer
stands. It’s lying like an old carpet
on the floor of the earth,
trampled by missiles, fat slippers
flying off legless feet.
I never knew my neighbors still had that small TV,
that the old painting still hung on their walls,
that their cat had kittens.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Colonisation, and Genocide
yourbookishbff's review
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, by Mosab Abu Toha, feels like it was written yesterday, and the continued relevancy of this collection is what makes it so gut-wrenching to read. A Palestinian poet born in and currently living in Gaza, Toha recounts first-hand experiences living through Israeli attacks. Some occur during prolonged conflicts - like those in 2014 or 2021 - and other incidents are described as the routine occurrences of violence in occupied Gaza. The incessant sound of drones, the constant threat of aerial attack, the accessibility of the beach to Israeli naval patrols - all are woven together in a net of surveillance that shadows day-to-day life. Toha's voice is reflective and unfiltered as it drifts between memories of family and images of leveled homes, reflections on ancestry and odes to death. As we bear witness to the horrors of occupation and ethnic cleansing in 2023, I am haunted by Toha's plea in US and THEM: "I want to build my house on a swing. / I don't want to walk on this earth"
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, War, and Death
sophiareads_'s review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and War
Moderate: Death and Colonisation
katharina90's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
There are so many powerful and deeply moving poems in this collection, I won't even try to name them all.
I also really enjoyed the interview with the poet.
"Through it all, the strawberries have never stopped growing."
I also really enjoyed the interview with the poet.
"Through it all, the strawberries have never stopped growing."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Medical trauma, Child death, and Colonisation
lettuce_read's review
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Child death, Colonisation, War, and Racism
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