Blood Orange by Yaffa: A Powerful Poetry Collection
What: Blood Orange by Yaffa
Who: Meraj Publishing
When: November 13 2023
How: Read through Kobo Plus.
“Blood Orange” is a highly emotional, important and timely poetry collection by Mx. Yaffa (They/She), a trans Muslim displaced Indigenous Palestinian. Their writings probe the yearning for home, belonging, mental health, queerness, transness, and other dimensions of marginalization while nurturing dreams of utopia against the background of ongoing displacement and genocide of indigenous Palestinians.
The collection came quickly and relentlessly, drawn from the depths of the author’s soul during a movement for a free Palestine and aligned with a solar eclipse. It beckons readers to re-evaluate what is perceived as immutable and to imagine pathways toward Utopia.
“Blood Orange”- the title an homage to the Yaffa Oranges (which were appropriated first by the British and subsequently by Israel) refers to the author themselves, their homeland and blood spilled in the name of settler colonialism.
This highly charged and cathartic body of work confronts the anguish and loss inflicted by genocide but also embraces a vision of a world free of it. The poems within “Blood Orange” were a means of working through and processing the grief caused by recent events and serve as an act of protest and defiance against settler colonialism as a whole.
The raw honesty of Yaffa’s words throughout Blood Orange is heartfelt to say the least. You can feel their pain at witnessing the genocide of her people, and the way people have tried to diminish the existence of Palestinians, the connection of Palestinians to their homeland, and their indigeneity.
she refuses
to look my
way, stating
again and again
there is no
such thing
as a
palestinian
There is also powerful resistance, the dream of a better world and a free Palestine, and the deepest love for Palestine within these poems. There is such beauty in this love and desire to be reconnected to their homeland at last.
Yaffa’s critique of politics, the silence of so many, and the lack of humanity that has been shown is both visceral and a true reflection of life.
you drew a line
when you said
anyone blue
as if blue and red
are not siblings
Last but certainly not least is Yaffa’s queerness and how it intersects with their Palestinian identity and her fight for liberation. Various poems touch on the line that we have all seen far too many times spouted from zionist mouths which I will not repeat here because it is not worth the effort.
In all honesty I was moved by every poem in this collection, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It both captures the pain of the genocide and reminds us that together we can create a better world, and of course a free Palestine.
for i am
Palestine and
she yearns for
me to taste
home
© 2025, Chiara @ Books for a Delicate Eternity. All rights reserved.
trigger warning racism, islamophobia, queerphobia, transphobia, colonisation, genocide
