I am 27 and have never killed a man
but I know the face of death as if heirloom
my country memorizes murder as lullaby
—from “For Fahd”
Textured with the sights and sounds of growing up in East New York in the nineties, to school on the South Side of Chicago, all the way to the olive groves of Palestine, My Mother Is a Freedom Fighter is Aja Monet’s ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters—the tiny gods who fight to change the world. Complemented by striking cover art from Carrie Mae Weems, these stunning poems tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, heartbreak, and grief, but also love, motherhood, spirituality, and Black joy.
Praise for Aja Monet:
““[Monet] is the true definition of an artist.”
—Harry Belafonte
““In Paris, she walked out onto the stage, opened her mouth and spoke. At the first utterance I heard that rare something that said this is special and knew immediately that Aja Monet was one of the Ones who will mark the sound of the ages. She brings depth of voice to the voiceless, and through her we sing a powerful song.”
—Carrie Mae Weems
Of Cuban-Jamaican descent, Aja Monet is an internationally established poet, performer, singer, songwriter, educator, and human rights advocate. Monet is also the youngest person to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title.
Industry Reviews
"Aja Monet 's poetry offers us textures of feeling and radical shifts of meaning that expand our capacity to envision and fight for new worlds. From Brooklyn, USA to Hebron, Occupied Palestine, we take a feminist journey through rage and serenity, through violence and love, through ancient times and imagined futures. This stunning volume reminds us that conflict and contradiction can produce hope and that poetry can orient us toward a future we may not yet realize we want."
-Angela Y. Davis
"We who follow the dynamic poetry of Aja Monet know her to be a wizard of optimism and musicality. My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter reminds us of her wisdom. These poems are made of the black woman genius they praise: 'the ghost of women once girls,' 'mothers who did the best they could,' and 'daughters of a new day.' Monet is a child of old school black power and a daughter of the myriad political traumas of today. Her poetry is indispensable. These poems are fire."
-Terrance Hayes
"Thank you, Aja Monet."
-Ava Duvernay
"Interesting, powerful, at times challenging poetry."
-Roxane Gay
"A triumphant collection."
-O Magazine
"Stunning and evocative... fierce and revolutionary."
-Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"A bold, intimate and powerful collection of poems."
-Ms. Magazine
"Aja Monet's writing blazes in these breathtakingly fierce poems."
-LitHub
"Generations of women, fighters all, live and breath in Monet's poetry... this book is a torch in the dark."
-Frontier Poetry
"A testament to the brilliance of Black women, from the South Side of Chicago and beyond."
-Bitch Magazine
"This might be THE single poetry collection I am most excited about this year."
-Bustle
"Aja Monet's poetry, like her activism, is one of resistance and reimagining. It resists simplicity, instead opening up new vistas for the reader and new points of entry into perspectives that are largely ignored; she gives voices to the marginalized and forgotten and imagines worlds in which those voices can ring out."
-The Los Angeles Review of Books
"My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter turns bodies that have been used as weapons into weapons of liberation. We cannot be contained."
-Courage Renewal
