Hawa Fuseini is a 23-year-old Nigerian and Ghanaian Muslim author who recently wrote Nabila's Garden, a poetry collection that combats the threatening climate of Islamophobia and racism through its poignant truths. Nabila's Garden is the antithesis of discrimination and vilification, shattering stereotypes of Black Muslim women and empowering all peoples.
The main character, Nabila, is a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl from Nigeria who, with her family, immigrates to the United States to seek a safe haven from the terrorist group Boko Haram. However, when Nabila arrives in the United States, she begins to experience hatred and racism in the form of Islamophobia. Since she had believed in America as the land of freedom and opportunity, Nabila is shocked; when she thinks matters cannot worsen, she is physically assaulted for her religion, and the attack is so horrific that she falls into a deep coma. The poetry moves with Nabila through this coma, following closely when she has little-to-no self-awareness. Nabila begins to imagine herself writing poems in a garden in a faraway land, the garden that is the peace that she desires to find in her life--the peace that most Blacks in the United States desire. While she inhabits this garden, she begins to imagine that she is writing poems about her love, heartbreak, loss, and redemption. These poems are an escape from Nabila's hectic life and the only way she knows to express how she truly feels.
Nabila's Garden takes each reader to this unique and captivating world through its beautiful poetry, which provides a traditional framework to convey clearly the difficult truth of love nestled within. Nabila Obeyere's experiences speak through the poetry, and her narrative of self-love, found through God's love for her, inspires readers to become as strong and resilient as she. Because her story is one of the deep redemption of her heart, soul, and mind, Nabila's journey especially connects with those who are not perfect, those who need hope, those who want to give up, and those who feel no one hears them. Nabila's Garden, through and through, refuses to entertain the idea that someone could be insignificant, that someone might not matter.
Here are some excerpts of poetry written by Hawa Fuseini intertwined with excerpts from Nabila's Garden:
1. Faith
1. Faith
2. Hijab
3. Misogyny
4. Reflection of Heartbreak
4. Reflection of Heartbreak
5. Absence of Love
6. True Love in Marriage
7. With Love
If you would like to read more you can order your copy of Nabila's Garden here: