A Poem For Diasporic Inner Peace

Self-knowledge as antidote to identity crisis

Keffieh (1993) by Mona Hatoum courtesy of Karolina Skorek

I see why we care so much

why we try to understand and fit it all

together neatly into boxes

for some it’s life or death

for others, validation

so it matters

one way or another

it matters

and what I know is

I am the youngest of my aunties

born in different places

watered by other patriarchies

my ethnicity is my father’s village

my race means the mountain where Fatima lived

my personality feels like my mothers tribe

my language sounds like Souria’s laugh

my humor drips from Maria’s cognac

my auntie kisses are hers too

my love of thought was

written by Andrious

my love of nature

born from his daughter

the first home I ever knew

I am weaved together delicately

by their joy,

survival’s grace

and grape vines

I am them and they are me

is what I know to be true

I am who ran

so that I could walk

whose stories live on

through my bones

so gratefully

I rest and walk

with all of them in

chaos and harmony

This poem is a humble ode to my elders and ancestors, especially the women of my lineage. It is a meditation on which parts of them I recognize within myself, how we shape each other throughout generations and how we can digest the weight of identity within third culture experience.

It also challenges Western society’s organization of identity, which has the potential to minimize and even erase authentic identity. In America, we check boxes to describe ourselves. Growing up in my community of Syriacs/Assyrians we collectively understood individual traits to mostly be a result of the collective, whether tribal ancestry or genetics. This schism in cultural perspectives offered me years of confusion as to who I was, and how to communicate my identity. Our people come from villages and tribes, and their history is one affected by forced displacement, gendered violence, religious persecution, tribal battles, proxy wars and ethnic cleansing. From all of this was born generations of trauma and also profound resilience, love, strength and the miracle of continued lineage. I have long struggled with how to translate this experience, but have finally found the words in this poem.

“A Poem for Diasporic Inner Peace” is a decolonized reclamation of personal identity, capturing the essence of the histories, people, memories, sounds and felt experiences that create the person I am always becoming. Thank you for reading.