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by Aja Monet (Author)
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.
Author Biography
aja monet is a Caribbean-American poet, performer, and educator from Brooklyn. She has been awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Prize for Poetry and the Nuyorican Poet's Café Grand Slam title, as well as the New York City YWCA's "One to Watch Award." She is the author of The Black Unicorn Sings and the co-editor, with Saul Williams, of Chorus: A Literary Mixtape. A co-founder of Smoke Signals Studio, she lives in Los Angeles and dedicates her time merging arts and culture in community organizing with the Dream Defenders and the Community Justice Project. monet's debut poetry album When The Poems Do What They Do was nominated for a Grammy in 2023.
