My people are rising by Mohja Kahf

Syrian poet/novelist/professor Dr. Mohja Kahf is full of passion about current events in her beloved Syria and the Middle East. We love her and her work, especially her thesis that the Black Arts Movement is the foundation of Muslim American literature. She asserts that Marvin X's collection of poems Fly to Allah, 1968, is the seminal work in Muslim American literature.

Her classic poem My Little Mosque appears in the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Issue, Guest Edited by Marvin X. A recent novel is The girl in the tangerine scarf, Carrol & Graf, 2006.
Mohja was born in Damascus, Syria, and came to the US as a child. An associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas, she is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque, and winner of an Arkansas Arts Council award. Her first book of poetry, E-mails from Scheherazad, was a finalist in the 2004 Paterson Poetry Prize.