“As a Palestinian writer, sometimes I am afraid no one will care what I have to say outside of my marginalization — every poem must be about the occupation, must be about expulsion. I fear in reading Abughattas’s work, I’ve zeroed in on those moments, despite poems like ‘Love Lyric’ and ‘Litany for My Father’ fitting just as well into her poetic framework. There are poems that engage with sex or queerness or loss that I am holding just as dearly. Much of my reading was focused on this idea of identities, without affirming clearly that there is a full person represented in these pages — perhaps the most impressive feat. Strip shines with its specificity. I love this book with its definitions, for how it grounds itself, for the reality it speaks through. There is nothing comparable.”
—Summer Farah, Anomaly, October 2020
Winner of the 2020 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, Jessica Abughattas’s Strip is a captivating debut about desire and dispossession and that tireless poetic metaphor—the body. Audacious and clear-eyed, plainspoken and brassy, Abughattas’s poems are songs that break free from confinement as they span the globe from Hollywood to Palestine.
Jessica Abughattas, who received an MFA from Antioch University, is a Kundiman Fellow. Her work has been published in Lit Hub, Redivider, BOAAT, Muzzle, The Journal, and Tinderbox, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles.
Anomaly is the Features Supplement to the Online Journal of Literature and Art.