Are You Listening? is a journey of sound, sight and story. Using poems and stories, this memoir explores intergenerational displacement, and speaks the truths of a woman who loses her innocence at a young age due to cultural inequity, and is forced to navigate a terrain foreign to her ancestors. Through the painful knocks of colonization, Zaynab Mohammed finds her freedom by leaning on the art of listening to herself, to others and to the earth. This book is a carefully woven tapestry of transforming pain into beauty, into magic, and into possibility. What her words uncover are a quenching truth that gives the author access to what she lost as a child — her innocence.

Zaynab Mohammed's profile page

Zaynab Mohammed is an award-winning performance poet. She was born on the coast of BC Canada, to immigrant parents fleeing war torn countries. She is Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian. The countries her parents grew up in, the cultures her family carries, the language of her grandmothers, the smell of tea and the taste of sweets, are what root Zaynab in her being. She pays homage to her ancestors, that carry her heavy heart, as she weaves stories and poems to share withthe world. Inspired by her family's hardships, Zaynab is a visionary creative who has been healing herself through the written word, by sharing her story and by giving her audience reflections into love and empowerment. Her latest production, Are You Listening? is a one-woman show which has been touring since 2023. Zaynab currently lives and works in Nelson BC with her dog Threshold, where she hosts the Nelson Poetry Slam and writes custom poems for passersby.

"Are You Listening? by Zaynab Mohammed is filled with beautiful and heartbreaking prose and poetry that engages the reader with all senses. With compelling images of life in a war-torn country, Mohammed’s powerful words explore the fragility of our world and the resiliency of humanity. Her narrative captivates as it describes a broken city in Lebanon and how a Canadian teenager tries to understand the devastation around her. This is a critical book, inspiring compassion and acceptance and also illustrating the divide many immigrants feel when moving or fleeing to a new country. Are You Listening? is an extraordinary collection of literature by an insightful writer." Sonia Saikaley, author of The Allspice Bath