Not Guilty by Amatan Noor

Amatan Noor‘s debut chapbook Not Guilty is a revelatory exploration of what it means to grapple with legacy. Those of pain, those of love, those of dislocation and return. What do we make with the fragments we inherit, with the stories we are left with? Noor is steadfast in her scrutiny of different histories, those of land and people alike. “We know to burn the abuse into the backs of our skulls,” she writes and, later: “I answer all the questions asked of me.” But the answering itself is an act of reclamation, a rewriting herself into narratives of surveillance and erasure. With humor, with heart, with a steady gaze, Noor gives us alternate narratives. They are a reprieve and a benediction all at once.

–Hala Alyan, author of The Arsonist’s City and The Twenty Ninth Year

These poems feature a fearless blues and melodic lattice of memoir. Scenes that oscillate between mind and gut through Noor’s gift for image and insight. Poems’ virtuosic further in that this music comes while she maintains a revolutionary altitude for analysis of political economy. This collection is right on epochal time; scaffolding for the humanity to come.

–Tongo Eisen-Martin, Poet Laureate of San Francisco

I have learned/it is better to observe, writes Amatan Noor, and it is this poet’s keen and omnipresent observations that propel these poems from mere arrangements of words, into vivid and dynamic portraits. I love this poet’s insistence on affixing everyday encounters beside large and sweeping metaphysical questions. Noor refuses to leave anything out or behind—I am grateful for this poet’s ferocity and generosity.

-Tarfia Faizullah, author of Seam and Registers of Illuminated Villages

Amatan Noor pens a Brown girl’s anthem, a survivor’s song, a lesson on womanhood and loneliness and so much more. Not Guilty gives us a glimpse into a Bangladeshi woman’s existence in America. Noor is choosing liberation over others’ expectations. Her writing is packed with imagery and genuine emotion cautioning readers at turns. This is a calling out of perpetrators of violence and a calling in of self. Noor’s debut offers a mourning of loved ones, love lost and past iterations of self while calling each to account for their actions.

-Roya Marsh, author of DayliGht