A Small Homecoming
Furqan Mohamed, Party Trick Press
The poems of A Small Homecoming are capsules of culture and context. This kind of preservation is a precious duty, and Furqan Mohamed proves her careful guardianship. Collectively, these poems model fleeting and fragmented sensations drawn from both life in Canada and the third culture with precision. They are gentle, yet complex, gesturing to unspoken elements of home, the mechanisms of migration, Somali tradition, and personal ways of being. Furqan’s melodic approach to Blackness and femininity are nuanced, opening up a critique of societal expectations even in moments of celebration.
A Small Homecoming inquires about the way we are nourished by inheritance and identity, but also, how we deploy them to distance ourselves from understanding each other. Mohamed’s lyrical vignettes of childhood will be familiar to many children of immigrants, diplomats and travellers, holding fondly to the scents, sights, and textures that shape the process of coming of age. Tender yet bold, writings like this one encourage us to honour our personal geographies and histories by remaining open to narratives outside of our own. To do so can fundamentally shift the way we experience the world.