Review: Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine by Smokii Sumac

I received an advanced reader copy of Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine from Netgally in exchange for an honest review. My rating is a 3.00 star.

This one is hard for me, especially if I had rated this based on the forward. It felt a little heavy-handed. Smokii is a member of the Ktunaxa nation (pronounced 'k-too-nah-ha'), they are also neurodivergent and transgender. I was excited to read something from an indigenous writer and a writer part of the neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ communities. I had originally thought this was a collection written by a Palestinian writer and was a little confused at first. I think the description of this collection is misleading and makes it sound like they are Palestinian, which is a disservice to the collection and its message on colonialism.

What Gave Me Pause

Back to the forward, I was a little miffed because it almost felt like that one friend who always has it worse than everyone else, like “oh you broke your leg in two places, I shattered my leg at 14 and it still gives me problems, you’re lucky”. Being a disabled person myself, who is neurodivergent, and queer, I am often confronted with people trying to one-up my experiences with chronic pain and spinal cord degeneration and so much more. It is not empathy; it is erasing my experience to garner attention. It also feels like those people who run up to me putting their hands on me or my wheelchair saying, oh honey, I feel so bad for you, can I pray over you? It feels self-indulgent and icky, which shows how experience can trigger us. I am glad I read on though because instead of allowing that misunderstanding to cloud my judgement, I can now whole-heartedly understand what Smokii was trying to say, even though I was just not a fan of the gaze. They opened my eyes to even more personal experiences from the gaze of a member of an indigenous nation.

While this is not a Palestinian own-voices collection, it is a colonialism own-voices account and so much more. That said, I believe Smokii could have focused on the Ktunaxa nation and given us something culturally personal and poignant. I did read a few of the lower rated reviews to see if I was being a little harsh, but I do agree with some criticisms. I am not part of any indigenous nation, nor am I Palestinian so I felt my opinion, in this context, was not valid. But as one reviewer, Omar Ramadan, put it, “There is so much wrong in this book that I am not too sure where to start. From the Orientalist gaze a lot of the poetry is couched in, to the way these poems reek of privilege and attempt assuage the author's guilt for not being able to do anything meaningful while Zionists genocide Palestinian people, to attempting to insert themselves as the voice necessary for this moment and taking up space that is undeserved.” I think that is the main takeaway here “attempting to insert themselves as the voice necessary for this moment”. I can surely see how this can come across that way.

I was not a big fan of the layout. While this might be an issue with the digital copy, the lack of some punctuation and/or delineation in several areas made it necessary to go back and reread certain parts. I am not new to poetry. I am an avid poetry reader, so I get the “no punctuation” choice, but the layout in the version I got made it quite hard to not read as a run-on which always brought me to an abrupt stop and having to go back to reread.

Where It Shines

From their place in the Ktunaxa nation, Smokii speaks of the effects of colonization on not only their indigenous ancestors, but the inequalities that still affect their lives today. I think drawing parallels to what is happening today in Gaza felt forced, though. Like they wanted to write about their own feelings about Ktunaxa colonization but felt in the face of what is happening in Gaza that they had to form a parallel. I tried to read this as just poetry, judging just based on the writing itself. Smokii’s prose, at times, are simply divine and can make the reader forget about the things that feel wrong about the collection.

I highlighted so many passages. Choosing what to share here was so hard. Smokii verbalizes the deep wells of emotion that so many of us naturally empathetic readers feel and understand. What comes across genuinely I the pain and tears and worse, anxiety that feeling deeply and feeling helpless causes.

Take Away

I think given at face value, Smokii wrote what she was feeling, what many of us are feeling watching helplessly from worlds away from what is happening in Gaza. I think so many of us feel the same sense of dread, sadness, and anger. With that said, I think it is important, in these moments, to step aside and give the stage to Palestinian writers and journalist. Lifting their voices so that their struggle is not being compared to or overshadowed by another group's experience. Right now, they need the light shown directly on Gaza. Smokii’s voice and her experience as Ktunaxa have a place and I am eager to read her other published work, You are Enough: Love Poems for the End of the World. I am also looking up more of Smokii’s history online, to get a sense of the writer and their experiences. What I know is that getting the stories, the histories, and the sufferings of any POC in front of white people is essential. In the end, it was the white man who has always been the oppressor, and it will take the white man waking up to put an end to their own horrible behaviors and conquering ways. It takes other white people shaming them and shaming and challenging their ways to force change, because change in this instance has to be forced.

Excerpt from Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine:

“sobbing I watched a video of a Palestinian child crying for their mother

how do we go on? felt the deep well of pain inside me

remembering crying on my own

how many generations taught not to cry? To take it out on themselves?

the least i can do is weep today and let the truth break me open our Ktunaxa nation went to the supreme court to fight for our sacred places

all places are sacred

the court said our name wrong told us

our religion has no space here

the developer of the proposed ski resort said

he wouldn’t call that place sacred

all places are sacred

yesterday they bombed a church in Palestine

a church that was older than the state of Isreal

and i think of how when notre dame burned

financially wealthy white people sent millions

what of that which is sacred to us?

all places all people all children born sacred I will kiss you in heaven”

Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine