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.
aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, musician, and cultural worker whose poems sing to us of love, gender, justice, and spirituality. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her writing sways between realms where the poetic is both a prayer and a call to action.
Her debut poetry collection, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, a tribute to women and girls in the pursuit of freedom, earned a 2018 NAACP Image Award nomination for poetry.
In 2023, she released When the Poems Do What They Do, a debut album of jazz and blues poetry. In 2024, she earned a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album, a testament to her voice, both on the page and in the world.
As artistic creative director for the Voices: A Scared Sisterscape audioplay and campaign with V-Day, monet is part of the global movement to end violence against women and girls. monet is a recipient of the EBONY Power 100 Artist in Residence Award, Tribeca Film Festival’s Harry Belafonte Social Justice Award, and the Nelson Mandela Changemaker Award.
ISBN: 9781608467679
Publication date: May 30, 2017
“aja monet ‘s poetry offers us textures of feeling and radical shifts of meaning that expand our capacity to envision and fight for new worlds. From Brooklyn, USA to Hebron, Occupied Palestine, we take a feminist journey through rage and serenity, through violence and love, through ancient times and imagined futures. This stunning volume reminds us that conflict and contradiction can produce hope and that poetry can orient us toward a future we may not yet realize we want.”
—Angela Y. Davis
“We who follow the dynamic poetry of aja monet know her to be a wizard of optimism and musicality. My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter reminds us of her wisdom. These poems are made of the black woman genius they praise: ‘the ghost of women once girls,’ ‘mothers who did the best they could,’ and ‘daughters of a new day.’ Monet is a child of old school black power and a daughter of the myriad political traumas of today. Her poetry is indispensable. These poems are fire.”
—Terrance Hayes
“Thank you, aja monet.”
—Ava Duvernay
“Interesting, powerful, at times challenging poetry.”
—Roxane Gay
“A triumphant collection."
—O Magazine
“Stunning and evocative... fierce and revolutionary.”
—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“A bold, intimate and powerful collection of poems.”
—Ms. Magazine
“aja monet’s writing blazes in these breathtakingly fierce poems.”
—LitHub
“Generations of women, fighters all, live and breath in monet's poetry… this book is a torch in the dark.”
—Frontier Poetry
“A testament to the brilliance of Black women, from the South Side of Chicago and beyond.”
—Bitch Magazine
“This might be THE single poetry collection I am most excited about this year.”
—Bustle
“aja monet’s poetry, like her activism, is one of resistance and reimagining. It resists simplicity, instead opening up new vistas for the reader and new points of entry into perspectives that are largely ignored; she gives voices to the marginalized and forgotten and imagines worlds in which those voices can ring out.”
—The Los Angeles Review of Books
“My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter turns bodies that have been used as weapons into weapons of liberation. We cannot be contained.”
—Courage Renewal
A poetry reading dedicated to our Palestinian comrades on Nakba Day, hosted by Aja Monet.
A May Day poetry reading dedicated to essential/frontline workers, hosted by Aja Monet.
Take 50% OFF all Haymarket Books through Tuesday, January 2nd! Get a FREE Ebook bundled with every book purchase! Get FREE Shipping on orders over $25 inside the US.
Edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, et al.
Edited by Claudia Tate
One of the best ways you can support Haymarket is by becoming a member of our subscription program. Receive up to 40 books per year and help ensure the future of radical publishing.
Join today and start your subscription with one or more of these new books!
