How to Cure a Ghost: Fariha Róisín

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How to Cure a Ghost explores a young woman’s journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance, and deserves to be as widely read as possible.

I can't dive deeper into the meaning of the poems because they feel as a way to deal with her own trauma and feelings, and it feels wrong to rate them when I have not shared similar experiences. I’m acutely familiar with that, more times than I’d care to admit, so I couldn’t help but really relate to and enjoy some bits. A poetry compilation recounting a woman's journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance, confusion to clarity, and bitterness to forgiveness.The author speaks about her own experiences, and I feel I have no right to say if they deserve a three, four, five, star rating. My favorites were “Golden Lube,” “Mansplain Nation,” “Rumi,” “This One’s with Teeth,” “What 9/11 Did to Us,” and “Belonging. This year I’ve been on something of a mission to educate myself about other experiences and stories, and this poetry collection has certainly left a mark. With that being said, most of the poems just end up lacking maturity and falling into every single postmodern poetry cliche imaginable.

Fariha Róisín uses her poems as a way to speak about what it’s like to navigate the terrain of colonialism in a brown, queer, Muslim body.And 400,000 women were raped ( they were not known and never will be known … r emember us, like you’d remember white death). Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Roisin and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities. We read of her experiences of 9/11, her family’s experiences of wars undocumented on white media, of 1971.

I can only hope the author was able to forgive those who wronged her and heal her generational trauma. It's about the abuse enacted by mothers, while considering the history of that abuse; it's about the psychological torture of being talked about but never heard, of not knowing the sound of our own voices because of how long it's been drowned out by others, it's about a deep empathy and respect for abusive parents who have survived so much that you'll never have to go through. Certains des poèmes étaient hyper poignants et émouvants, on ressent sa rage, sa haine, sa fierté, son amour.Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall). Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between RoísiÔn and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities. Roisin's] writing is intensely vulnerable and through revealing her own experience she reflects so many others. The struggles she faced as a queer, young Muslim woman puts into focus the parallel strife of the everyday brown woman. In these short and potent stanzas she makes it clear that while she's been able to lay down the ghosts that have haunted her own self-worth, loving herself back to health after the mental and physical exhaustion of weathering constant aggressions is a long and continuous process.