How are we formed by language? How do we form the world through language? How are our concepts of who we belong to, and where we might belong, formed? These are some of the questions at the heart of Bitter English, Ahmad Almallah's first collection of poetry--perhaps better thought of as an "autobiography in verse."
Almallah explores the themes of family, home and identity in fluid language. The free verse of the poems allows for a deeper exploration of the construction of culture. The titular poem opens the collection, and sets the tone for the rest of the book. Almallah writes, "I owe everything to one place that owns me, not/ here, where what I owe I do not own," and from this point, his writing conveys a sense of being broken apart and remade by borders. Whether those borders are geographical, based on language or cultural, there is a continuing process of learning and unlearning the sense of being whole, of being certain of one's identity. Readers see the flux of selfness in different contexts, across different timelines, and contemplations of what was and what might have been. In poems such as "Lines of Return," this sense is furthered, evoking the strangeness of returning to a place we once thought we knew intimately.
In accessible verse, Bitter English brings to the forefront the displacement in every aspect of the immigrant experience, and Almallah's distinctive voice manages to put this ineffable experience into words. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer