Where Will I Find America?

"the martyr's homage is a stone's throw to & from the margins
stones are a homeland's oxymoron of mortar & mirrors
eulogies are epics until they drip from a rope-strung tree & become lotuses
there is always an again & an again"

Mostafa's debut is not simply a collection of poems. Rather, it serves as an exodus to discover belonging in a land that manifests hostility and exclusion. With confessional precision, Where Will I Find America? mournfully transports readers between California's Central Valley to the annals of Egypt, where tension and trauma provoke an interrogation of what it means to not just exist, but to transcend. For Mostafa, the humanity painted within the space of relationships, faith, and the natural world epitomizes how vital poetry is in inspiring us to reclaim ourselves from the world around us. Brace yourself. Where Will I Find America? is the collection of poetry that reconciles so many opposing forces (peace vs. violence, hate vs. forgiveness, etc.) upon a path where you, the reader, will ultimately have to construct your own meaning.

Praise for Where Will I Find America?:

"In the debut collection Where Will I Find America?, Tamer Said Mostafa renders narratives of childhood to adulthood demanding an interrogation of what it means to be a person of other. From body image to intimacy, these poems beautifully weave inextricable culture and place. Islamic traditions provide the framework for extraordinary love of family as well as witnessing of self as each poem shelters the narrative bravely. We too want to see the past with eloquent bravery, knowing that its truth is not the same as what we imagine. This collection's lyrical and visual evocations do no harm in the telling about the harmed. Empathy and love counter the brutality of social order and familial dislocation. As Mostafa brings mind and body into these compassionate poems, he reveals a hopeful awakening."
-Rhony Bhopla

"Tamer Said Mostafa's Where Will I Find America? is not a search for the idyllic vision of this country. It is a reclamation of one's self within the American landscape, specifically the rural and exurban backdrops of California's Central Valley, the kind of place certain media pundits and politicians like to claim is the 'real America.' And in between the crabgrass and the conifers, the river deltas and the streets of Stockton, Mostafa claims his existence, his familial heritage and faith in a place that would never reflect it back to him. This book searches for the America that is, for its truth and its reckoning, and, as he says, "Our America / Sophistic. Fallacy. Subconscious. / Smoke and millstones, / ever more our country."
-Jason Bayani, author of Locus