Are You Listening?

Are You Listening? is a journey of sound, sight and story. Using poems and stories, this memoir explores intergenerational displacement, and speaks the truths of a woman who loses her innocence at a young age due to cultural inequity, and is forced to navigate a terrain foreign to her ancestors. Through the painful knocks of colonization, Zaynab Mohammed finds her freedom by leaning on the art of listening to herself, to others and to the earth. This book is a carefully woven tapestry of transforming pain into beauty, into magic, and into possibility. What her words uncover are a quenching truth that gives the author access to what she lost as a child — her innocence.

“With compelling images of life in a war-torn country, Mohammed’s powerful words explore the fragility of our world and the resiliency of humanity, filled with beautiful and heartbreaking prose and poetry that engages the reader with all senses.”

Sonia Saikaley, author of The Allspice Bath

“As an Indigenous person who grew up in so-called Canada, I know what it is like to be misunderstood, unheard, and unseen. Because I grew up here, I was also taught to misunderstand, to not see, and to not hear the narratives of Muslim Canadians: Palestinians, Iraqi and Lebanese people. With generous honesty, Zaynab Mohammed offers us a chance to truly listen to her story, which is one of family, lineage, and culture. Any person in Canada who is committed to reconciliation should also pledge to undoing and unlearning the racism and xenophobia that we have been taught in the contexts of Mohammed’s homelands. Start here and now. When Mohammed asks Are you Listening? Honour her story and the strength it takes to tell it. Say yes.”

Smokii Sumac, author of you are enough: love poems for the end of the world & winner of Indigenous Voices Award for English Poetry

Are You Listening?

ISBN: 9781998129263

$22.95 CAD | Paperback / softback

Height: 7.75"

Width: 5.00"

Pages: 96

Publication Date: September 10, 2024

Zaynab Mohammed is an award-winning performance poet. She was born on the coast of BC Canada, to immigrant parents fleeing war torn countries. She is Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian. The countries her parents grew up in, the cultures her family carries, the language of her grandmothers, the smell of tea and the taste of sweets, are what root Zaynab in her being. She pays homage to her ancestors, that carry her heavy heart, as she weaves stories and poems to share with the world. Inspired by her family’s hardships, Zaynab is a visionary creative who has been healing herself through the written word, by sharing her story and by giving her audience reflections into love and empowerment. Her latest production, Are You Listening? is a one-woman show which has been touring since 2023. Zaynab currently lives and works in Nelson BC with her dog Threshold, where she hosts the Nelson Poetry Slam and writes custom poems for passersby. https://www.zaynabmohammed.com