How to Cure a Ghost: Fariha Róisín

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this felt like a very twitter thread-y take on these topics with an occasional sprinkle of SAT words. The underdeveloped metaphors along with the insistence of talking about the same themes that have already been discussed in plenty of other poetry collections before made me give this book only 1 star - it brings to the literary scene absolutely nothing new. I’m a feminist, but I’m a white feminist, and I’m very aware of the privilege which comes with that. If Fariha Roisin does not want to be judged for how she looks than she needs to work on not judging others by the same stereotypes.

i have read and enjoyed a few poetry collections over the last few years but this one certainly does stand out in the crowd. And ‘we go on, sisters, we go on’, dedicated to Jyoti Pandey Singh, who was gang-raped on a bus by six men on 16 December 2012 ( i’m tired for all the women we’ve lost. A poetry compilation recounting a woman's journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance, confusion to clarity, and bitterness to forgiveness. It explores shame, ancestral trauma and violence—weaving in Róisin’s personal experience of abuse at the hands of her mother, while also being trapped in a body, time and era where she’s being forced to confront the many things that have haunted her.Fariha Róisín uses her poems as a way to speak about what it’s like to navigate the terrain of colonialism in a brown, queer, Muslim body. A lot of it hit me really hard—Fariha Roisin is not afraid to pack a punch, but there are also some really beautiful poems about self-love and empowerment. This year I’ve been on something of a mission to educate myself about other experiences and stories, and this poetry collection has certainly left a mark.

Over the summer, I saw a few Bookstagram accounts raving about early review copies of Fariha Róisín’s How to Cure a Ghost.In these short and potent stanzas she makes it clear that while she's been able to lay down the ghosts that have haunted her own self-worth, loving herself back to health after the mental and physical exhaustion of weathering constant aggressions is a long and continuous process. She seeks to re-educate throughout, such as in ‘what 9/11 did to us’ – 2,976 Americans died that day. If you’re like me, and often quick to dismiss poetry as a result of terrible required reading at school, please be reassured that there is some fucking awesome modern poetry available.