Book Review
Patricia Thrushart on Red and Crescent Moons by Tabassam Shah, Watershed, 2022.
The allure of Red and Crescent Moons by poet Tabassam Shah begins before you even open the book. There’s the title: evocative and descriptive, with more than a faint nod to the flag of South Carolina, the author’s home state. But even more so, there’s the cover art— glorious and rich, with undulating lines, saturated colors and a mystic landscape. Created by Shah’s relative, Fatima Zahra Hassan, the title of the cover art is “Assembly of Birds.” It’s a perfect name for the artwork, and a perfect precursor to the poetry that follows. Shah’s work is filled with birds, with ancestors, with memories. Her stories, told with impactful images and sometimes playful observations, allow you to imagine what it was like to grow up Muslim in Southern Appalachia, the daughter of a dark-skinned man and fair woman, eating saag-aloo along with collard greens. With that understanding comes a new awareness of what otherness feels like, how beauty can be found in the simplest places, and where love resides.
Shah is not the first to explore otherness in Appalachia. Her work stands alongside the writing of authors like Neema Avashia, who wrote Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place. Both Shah and Avashia defy long-standing Appalachian stereotypes. Yes, Virginia, there are Indian people, and Muslims, in the mountains. And Blacks. Affrilachian authors too have claimed their place in the sweeping narrative that captures true Appalachia. For instance, Crystal Wilkinson’s The Birds of Opulence explores the fictional saga of two Black families facing mental illness, complicated relationships and the demands of the land. Wilkinson’s voice— similarly poetic and lyrical— is another example of an emerging group of writers challenging the predictable characterizations of the region offered by many (here’s looking at you, J.D. Vance). Shah’s work belongs squarely within this movement.
Dr. Philip Terman writes in his excellent foreword that Shah’s poetry “shift(s) registers of tone, mixing, in the tradition of Adrienne Rich, a vivid lyrical sense with political invective,” referring to the very first poem in the collection, “Sanctuary.” The poem tells of her community’s efforts to hold their Friday prayers, and the passive-aggressive reaction among the people she thought of as neighbors. “Fear that lies deep within re-emboldened white fragility,” the poet laments, followed by a question asked in one form or another by wave upon wave of people considered “other:” “Do my blood vessels remind you of Shaytan’s fingernails, but not your own?”
Shah continues to examine that loss of innocence and desire for safety in the very next poem, “banned” as the narrator states:
I smolder, I simmer: I’m a closet muslim
members of my cohort banned
I’m done with apologies
this brown poet of rural America
I sought camaraderie with seekers of sanctuary…
In spite of the anger so deftly evoked in these first poems, Shah can imagine a better world: “in the riots of our dreams/There will be no mourning/for the old order/We will awaken to/Dusty cooing doves/Walking on embers and ash.” Perhaps it was the endearing cast of characters that we meet in these poems that kept Shad from complete despair. There is Momma, “the best church organist in town,” who yelled “bless you, child,” as the narrator left her house; or a patient of Shah’s father’s who “tamed the red clay to produce harvests” in a way that seemed magical to the young girl. Perhaps it was her uncle, “horn rimmed glasses precariously resting on the tip of his nose/Thick lenses with soda bottle bottoms,” who challenged his niece to translate his poetry written in Urdu; and surely it was her mother, her “deep orange lipstick/The color of nasturtiums…/Her sari the color of apricot blush/embroidered with violets…/the marigolds she loved so dearly/Keeping a bud in a vase at her bedside in summer…/ This poem, “My Mother’s Colored Afterimage,” is my unabashed favorite in the collection. I can practically taste her mother’s “saffron sweetened rice studded with pistachios and golden raisins../ and understand why Shah sees “holiness in this color/Worn by enrobed sadhus and monks…”
In many ways, Shah is at her most expressive when writing about the people who infused her childhood with humor, whimsy and affection. In the poem “Challo, Larki!” Shah’s mother insists on a walk even as she is being treated for breast cancer. Lacing up her “sparkly white tennis shoes,” she wears a linen shalwar kameez in the hot sun, and sallies out to kiss neighborhood children on the cheeks, pinch off plant cuttings to tuck into her dupatta, and embarrass her daughter with her “sing-songy Punjabi accent echoing in the neighborhood.” The poet recreates a picture of her mother as surely as a portrait painter, and the reader is both charmed by the mother, and sad to know she no longer is here to greet her neighbors on their porches.
Besides her writing, Tabassam Shah is an activist. One delightful aspect of her first poetry collection is its breadth of topics: otherness and the cruelty it brings, childhood memories, and lastly, a celebration of the natural world. Poems such as “Porcupinal Ponderings at Seneca Rocks,” “Prolonging the Bounty of Autumn’s Glory,” and “The Forest Cathedral” all celebrate the part of Appalachia Shah now calls home: the Pennsylvania Wilds. In these poems, Shah uses her rich language to capture the region’s beauty: “Hope was green in the misty glen/Toppled white pine and hemlock/Blanketed with moss and running ground pine/Creeping and colonizing thickets and clearings/Creating its own forest in miniature…”
The collection ends in the woods and the peace it brings, where Shah can “release the extraneous, the burdensome/To put aside all my needlessly costly ways of using energy/In true silence, I can reacquaint myself with the stillness within/To immerse myself in an inner nectar of love.” She leaves us there, after our journey with her through memories, moments of laughter, of wistfulness, and bursts of anger, all wrapped up in language and observation as detailed as the gorgeous cover art. And we sit, content.
Patricia Thrushart writes poetry and biographies from her home in the Pennsylvania Wilds. Her fifth and latest book of poems, Goddesses I Have Known, was put out by QPC Publishing with proceeds benefiting a local domestic violence shelter, Clarion County SAFE. Her previous collection, Inspired By Their Voices: Poetry From Underground Railroad Testimony was originally published by Mammoth Books and benefits social justice causes. Patricia’s poems have been published in numerous journals. She is co-editor of the blog and anthology series for North/South Appalachia and co-founder of the group Poets Against Racism & Hate USA. In 2021 her work was chosen for an award-winning anthology of Ohio Appalachian voices, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing. She’s had poems included in the “Women of Appalachia Speaks” series. Her narrative nonfiction book, Cursed: The Life and Tragic Death of Marion Alsobrook Stahlman, was published in December 2021 by Adelaide Books.