First Writing Since

Suheir Hammad is an American poet, author, and political activist. She was born in Amman, Jordan. Her parents were Palestinian refugees who immigrated along with their daughter to Brooklyn, New York when she was five years old. Her parents later moved to Staten Island. When hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons came across the poem included in this issue, he signed Hammad to a deal with HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. In 2008, she was cast in her first fiction role in cinema, the Palestinian film Salt of this Sea by Annemarie Jacir, which premiered as an official selection of the Cannes International Film Festival.