Reviews

Birthright by George Abraham

twirlsandwhirls's review

5.0

George Abraham has written complicated poems about love, family, history, Palestine, and belonging. There are gorgeous lines, novel poetry forms, and complex conversations all happening in this collection. At times, the poems are dense and hard to parse, at others they are more freely flowing. I love that they thanked the slam spaces where I originally heard their voice and poems around Boston. I love that these poems forced me to think about what it means to lose a country, what it means to be queer, what it means to love family.

abetterjulie's review

4.0

Abraham's use of form is intriguing and entertaining, but when the form hardens into blocks, the emotions stop coming slanted and gasping, and instead land hard, like running into that wall of text, heart first. When there’s space to breathe, to look around in wonder at experience-now blended into experience-then, and to feel pulled in rather than shut out, the poems speak loudest to me. This all fits well with the themes of disjointed family, shifting memory, and an entire place and culture being walled off into silence. A paradox of form, that the white spaces have a necessary sound. This collection felt like sitting down to listen to a friend late at night, requiring a centered place inside to listen and time to let them say all that needs said.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.