Suheir Hammad is an American poet, author, performer, and political activist. She was born in Amman, Jordan. Her parents were Palestinian refugees who immigrated along with their daughter to Brooklyn, New York City when she was five years old. Her parents later moved to Staten Island. As an adolescent growing up in Brooklyn, Hammad was heavily influenced by Brooklyn's vibrant hip-hop scene. She had also absorbed the stories from her parents and grandparents of life in their hometown of Lydda, before the 1948 Palestinian exodus, and of the suffering they endured afterward, first in the Gaza Strip and then in Jordan. From these disparate influences Hammad was able to weave into her work a common narrative of dispossession, not only in her capacity as an immigrant, a Palestinian and a Muslim, but as a woman struggling against society's inherent sexism and as a poet in her own right. When hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons came across her piece entitled "First Writing Since", a poem describing her reaction to the September 11 attacks, he signed her to a deal with HBO's Def Poetry Jam. She recited original works on tour for the following two years. In 2008, she was cast in her first fiction role in cinema, the Palestinian filmSalt of this Sea by Annemarie Jacir, which premiered as an official selection in the Un Certain Regard competition of the Cannes Film Festival. She is now working on her third publication which will be a book of prose. She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books, for which she wrote a piece based upon the Book of Haggai in the King James Bible.
Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab-American Writing
Becoming American
Bum Rush the Page
The Poetry of Arab Women
Voices for Peace
Another World is Possible
33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women’s History
Trauma at Home
Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray!; Feminist Visions for a Just World
Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway
Short Fuse, The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry, edited by Swift & Norton;
Word. On Being a Writer, edited by Jocelyn Burrell;
Additional resources
Hanna, S. M. "Suheir Hammad's Negotiated Historiography of Arab America." Philology 61.1: 44-71.
Harb, Sirène. "Naming Oppressions, Representing Empowerment: June Jordan's and Suheir Hammad's Poetic Projects." Feminist Formations 26.3 : 71-99.
Hartman, Michelle. "‘A Debke Beat Funky as P.E.’s Riff’: Hip Hop Poetry and Politics in Suheir Hammad’s Born Palestinian, Born Black". Black Arts Quarterly 7.1 : 6-8. Print.
Harb, Sirène. "Transformative Practices and Historical Revision: Suheir Hammad’s Born Palestinian, Born Black". Studies in the Humanities 35.1 : 34-49.
Hopkinson, Natalie. "Out of the Ashes, Drops of Meaning: The Poetic Success of Suheir Hammad". The Washington Post, 13 October 2002
Oumlil, Kenza. "'Talking Back': The Poetry of Suheir Hammad". Feminist Media Studies 13.5 : 850-859.
