Taslīm
We are the Prophets
- Publisher
- Mawenzi House Publishers Ltd.
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2025
- Category
- Women Authors, Canadian
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781774151877
- Publish Date
- Apr 2025
- List Price
- $11.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781774151860
- Publish Date
- Apr 2025
- List Price
- $20.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
These poems by an author of Coptic (Egyptian Christian Orthodox) daughter of immigrants, depict, explore, and question the burden of Taslim ("Commandments") on Coptic girls. Taslim is the "oral transmission of heritage and ancestral knowledge." The poems highlight the ways in which diaspora Coptic women navigate taslīm or the responsibilities of transmitting ancestral knowledge while reckoning with its costs: deferred joy and pleasure until the afterlife, an almost compulsory notion of motherhood, and a gendered comportment of ascetic and martyr living, even in diaspora. Taslim in the insecure Christian minority of Egypt became a rigid bind in the immigrant communities abroad.
About the author
Contributor Notes
Carolyn Ramzy is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at Carleton University. She specializes in Egyptian Coptic Christian music-making, especially by women who defy patriarchal restrictions and move to sing online to navigate questions around gender, sexuality, and diaspora belonging. She lives in Ottawa.