Review by letsgolesbians - Sage

letsgolesbians 's review for:

Sage by Yaffa As

5.0

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad

i was so excited to be chosen as an advanced ready for sage! sage is the latest poetry collection by mx. yaffa, who also wrote blood orange. in sage, yaffa writes about the pain of interpersonal transphobic violence. all transphobia is systemic, but this collection acknowledges and describes heartache and emotions that comes from people in trans folks' lives being transphobic, the pain of having people only love parts of you. there are some especially aching poems about not being able to see or talk to loved ones' children and knowing your children will not meet people, all because of transphobia. relationships are at the center of collection, including the relationship we have with ourselves.

mx. yaffa is an important poetic voice, not shying away from anger and rage and disappointment and other emotions people of the global majority are told to ignore in order to be more palatable and to make others feel more comfortable. yaffa is a disabled, autistic, trans, queer, muslim, indigenous palestinian who rightfully refuses to separate one part of their identity from the others. those of us who live at the intersection of multiple identities cannot separate them, which is how we know we're not free until we all are free--you cannot have queer liberation and not palestinian liberation, because there are queer people in palestine and queer palestinians in the diaspora, and b0mbs don't differentiate between queers and nonqueers when they're landing.

queers with palestine as in there is queerness in palestine and while queer palestinians are policed by z eye on ists for being palestinian (and while queer bipoc here are policed by cops and sheriffs and while other colonized people continue to be policed by their colonizers), no one can call themselves free. gay marriage is not the mark of liberation; the boot off everyone's neck is.

sage comes out may 15 from meraj publishing, a trans and queer muslim publishing house that centers tqm voices from the global majority. all proceeds go to trans folks most affected by ongoing gen ocides. you can preorder on bookshop, and i'm happy to let friends borrow my copy. thank you meraj publishing for an early copy in exchange for a review!

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