In this expansive debut collection, Ali draws from the Quran and the Bible as vehicles for a deeper consideration of the intersections of family, gender, and faith... These powerful, resonant poems herald an exciting new voice. Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Describing the speaker of the poems as someone who bleeds, lusts, gives birth, and dreams of abortions, Ali wields visceral bodily descriptions and subversive transformations of religious narratives to assert that women and their wombs are the true bearers of humanity. ... With Theophanies, Ali celebrates the mother line as something that rebels against the confinements of narrow belief systems and resists the inclination for women to be written out. Harvard Review This compelling collection has a highly original and sustained voice ... I havent read a book of poems that so fully explores the relationship between soul and body. Mom Egg Review A debut collection full of twists and turns, Theophanies is energetic, critically engaging, and linguistically rigorous. There is much to admire in these rich and varied poems, which carry the reader with relentless momentum toward a fixed point on the horizon. What is this point? Perhaps it is a realization of womanhood which is not wounding or violent, but peaceful. Ali is not simply writing the poems we want, but the poems we need. Rain Taxi A stirring examination of faith, womanhood, and cultural inheritance through lyric poems that reimagine female figures and stories from the Islamic tradition... Devoted to unsilencing voices through fresh language, Ali compels us toward more generous, inclusive ways of seeing, being in, and believing in the world. The Los Angeles Review of Books Sarahs collection of poems in Theophanies weaves together faith, doubt, and the female body into a tight knotone that lived in the pit of my stomach long after I had read it. Riz Ahmed
