Keynote
Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Harryette Mullen
Book Title
The Wild Fox of Yemen
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- Winner of the 2021 Maya Angelou Book Award
Winner of the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize
Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry
Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection
Poem Excerpt
One day, nameless limbs, small square
of sidewalk, like a fig fallen too soon.
The next, a gang member’s mascot, beast
born from an Arab’s love, coked-up rats.
A woman in tragedy will also grow that fast,
turn from whimpers to wind in seconds
with the right kind of violence, and after,
make herself a home for the lost
who look for it.
—from “Ode to Bodega Cats”
of sidewalk, like a fig fallen too soon.
The next, a gang member’s mascot, beast
born from an Arab’s love, coked-up rats.
A woman in tragedy will also grow that fast,
turn from whimpers to wind in seconds
with the right kind of violence, and after,
make herself a home for the lost
who look for it.
—from “Ode to Bodega Cats”
Body
By turns aggressively reckless and fiercely protective, always guided by faith and ancestry, Threa Almontaser’s incendiary debut asks how mistranslation can be a form of self-knowledge and survival. A love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before, Almontaser’s polyvocal collection sneaks artifacts to and from worlds, repurposing language and adapting to the space between cultures. Half-crunk and hungry, speakers move with the force of what cannot be contained by the limits of the American imagination, and instead invest in troublemaking and trickery, navigate imperial violence across multiple accents and anthems, and apply gang signs in henna, utilizing any means necessary to form a semblance of home. In doing so, The Wild Fox of Yemen fearlessly rides the tension between carnality and tenderness in the unruly human spirit.
List Price
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About the Author
Credit: Yasmin Ali
Praise
- “Almontaser’s debut collection is a wonderfully crafted portrait of Muslim womanhood and the country and people of Yemen. . . . Throughout, Almontaser weaves in history, cultural traditions, and the Arabic language, revealing a standout gift for metaphor, wordplay, and storytelling.”—Library Journal, starred review
- “The beautifully crafted poems can feel like mini-histories, intricate narratives spanning only a few pages. They overflow with richness and opportunities for interpretation, shifting between Arabic and English; yet they are self-contained and pointed as a missile.”—Chicago Review of Books
- “Almontaser’s daring debut both speaks to and transcends the times.”—BookPage
- “Really one could not say enough good things about the poems of Threa Almontaser in The Wild Fox of Yemen. . . . With counterpoints of old and new worlds, and full love and care for possibility, in brilliant rushes of language, these poems know it's so hard to be all we are, but they rise to every occasion.”—Naomi Shihab Nye
