It Begins With The Body
It Begins With The Body by Hana Shafi explores the milestones and hurdles of a brown girl coming into her own. Shafi's poems display a raw and frank intimacy and address anxiety, unemployment, heartbreak, relationships, identity, and faith.
Accompanied by Shafi's candid illustrations that share the same delightful mixture of grotesque and humour found in her poems, It Begins With The Body navigates the highs and lows of youth. It is about feeling like an outsider, and reconciling with pain and awkwardness. It's about arguing with your mum about wanting to wax off your unibrow to the first time you threw up in a bar in your twenties, and everything in between. Funny and raw, personal and honest, Shafi's exciting debut is about finding the right words you wished you had found when you needed them the most.
HANA SHAFI is a writer and illustrator (Frizz Kid). Her work frequently explores themes of feminism, body politics, racism, and pop culture. She’s published articles in publications such as The Walrus, Hazlitt, This Magazine, and more. She received the Women Who Inspire Award from the Canadian Council for Muslim Women in 2017. She is the author of People You Know, Places You’ve Been; Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty: Affirmations for the Real World; and It Begins With The Body, which was selected by CBC Books as one of the best poetry titles of 2018. Hana and her family immigrated to Mississauga from Dubai in 1996. She now lives in Toronto with her two cute, but sometimes annoying, cats.
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