Tarfia Faizullah reads from her book of poetry Seam for the Kelly Writers Series lecture on Sunday evening. ZACH TAYLOR / THE DEPAUW
Tarfia Faizullah, winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) New Writers Award for poetry, read poems from two of her collections to an intimate audience on Sunday night as part of the Kelly Writers Series. Faizullah won the GLCA award with her book, "Seam," a poetic exploration of the rape of more than 300,000 Bangladeshi women by Pakistani soldiers during the Bangladeshi war of independence in 1971. Faizullah expanded on the themes of tragedy, love, family, religion and identity in her discussions with DePauw faculty and students.
Faizullah drew inspiration for the book from her Bangladeshi familial background, and her mother and sister in particular. In her year in Bangladesh through the Fulbright program, Faizullah was able to communicate in Bengali to over 20 victims, along with conducting historical research of the tragic phenomenon. Her poems are jarring and brutally insightful. Although the poems dive into some “tough stuff,” as Faizullah puts it, she was still thrilled to present them to the DePauw community.
“I’m delighted to be coming to DePauw as the GLCA New Writers’ Award in poetry, especially because colleges like DePauw are such incredible hubs of thoughtful and rigorous learning,” Faizullah said. “At any point in history, it seems that the opportunity to connect with each other through the literary arts has been important to nurturing our minds and our spirits. I’m excited to connect with students and faculty alike at DePauw, and look forward to leaving transformed and warmed by the common pursuit of self-awareness through language.”
And that she did. Jacob Strauss, a sophomore who had previously studied Faizullah’s work, said Faizullah’s reading affected him deeply.
“I had to read the collection of poems for a class of mine, and finally being able to hear them read by Faizullah, in her voice and with her explanations of why they were written, really drew the experience of reading them myself full circle,” Strauss said. “Her poems, not just the ones from 'Seam,' are wonderfully yet hauntingly colorful, and the tone of voice in which she reads and writes them takes a subject that is very uncomfortable and horrible, and makes it somewhat accessible to read and comprehend.”
In between reading her poems and at the end during the question and answer session, Faizullah revealed the background to the poems and explained the impact that the women she talked to had on her and her identity as a Bangladeshi woman. As Faizullah pointed out, the women showed grace in their everyday survival. Despite their tragic past, the women were able to find reasons to laugh and were overwhelmingly compassionate to others.
“These women showed me that light is possible in all manners of circumstances,” Faizullah said.
Rachel Higson, a sophomore who has also studied Faizullah’s work, illustrated the importance of Faizullah’s poems.
“Reading Faizullah’s collection is an experience. By the conclusion of the collection, we realize that our discomfort does not originate from the sense that Faizullah has no right to document these women’s stories,” Higson said. “Rather, it comes from within us—those of us readers, those who live in less war-torn and healing places, those who remain oblivious to the musk of a day's work and travel, odor of kerosine, sight of blood blossoming in water, and the sound of whispers of shame that brand the back of their minds, lingering like the sound of a generator—we wonder why we have the right to read for luxury, to have sex for pleasure, to live a peaceful life, to live. By the end, at least for me, I do not only view it as the right, but also the duty of such a willing, sympathetic hand’s depiction of this trauma, as well as our duty to read it, because these women are practically forgotten as it is.”
Faizullah’s book, "Seam," can be purchased at Eli's Books.