Geter, Hafizah: Un-American

Wesleyan University Press, paperback

Publication Date: September 8, 2020

Publisher Marketing: "Dancing between lyric and narrative, Hafizah Geter's debut collection moves readers through the fraught internal and external landscapes--linguistic, cultural, racial, familial--of those whose lives are shaped and transformed by immigration. The daughter of a Nigerian Muslim woman and a former Southern Baptist black man, Geter charts the history of a black family of mixed citizenships through poems imbued by migration, racism, queerness, loss, and the heartbreak of trying to feel at home in a country that does not recognize you. Through her mother's death and her father's illnesses, Geter weaves the natural world into the discourse of grief, human interactions, and socio-political discord. This collection thrums with authenticity and heart."

"Hafizah Geter's Un-American chronicles the haunting legacies of brutal loss written in blood and memory across continents--'together, slowly domesticating / our suffering.' The poems' narrative clarity edges against exile, and in gorgeous language deliver a trenchant testimony and understanding."--Khadijah Queen, author of Anodyne

"Hafizah Geter's Un-American reads like a high lyric conversation overheard. Poem after poem, the most ordinary of items--cups, cards, couches--get ratcheted up into their proper glory. In other words, Geter sees the world as a stage set for what she needs to tell her family but can't, what she needs to hear from her family but won't. And all of this is done with attention to what this one beautiful story says about the so-called American story."--Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition

"In Un-American, Hafizah Geter creates a new kind of portraiture. A family is slowly etched in relief in language both lush and exacting. This gorgeous debut troubles and reshapes notions of belonging against the backdrop of a country obsessed with its own exclusions, erasures, borders, institutions, and violence. Geter's poems simmer original forms of witness and resistance."--Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

"Here is the history of this country in all its blood and complication, with all its promise and betrayal. These poems are an accounting, a testimony, a prayer--poems meant to quiet the animal inside us. A beautiful book."--Nick Flynn, author of I Will Destroy You

"This timely and powerful book speaks to the struggles on two nations, and to the grace of the invincible light of black life."--Rigoberto González