21: JULIA KOZA ON ‘A BOOK WITH A HOLE IN IT’ BY KAMELYA OMAYMA YOUSSEF

Wholeness that comes after a lifetime.

Years of fragmentation.

A sliver of sunlight through a curtain.

Not absolved from feeling.

States of fear creep up and grip.

Despite the fear, find.

Again, Inshallah.

Again.

- Kamelya Omayma Youssef

Somewhere in between language, art, and politics, there is poetry, and within poetry exists the ability to repurpose and redefine language, to strip it of its previous power instead of taking it at face value. A coded language guided by emotion that can hold contradiction without resolving it. To be political without becoming an explanation of politics. In A book with a hole in it, Youssef uses fragments, silences, and the language of everyday survival to explore what happens when language fails in the face of violence. Writing through patriarchy, diaspora, racialization, and “terror,” she asks what can be said, what remains unsayable, and what might exist beyond trauma.

I picked up her book shortly after moving back to the United States. After some time abroad, it really reiterated for me that it doesn’t necessarily matter where you are. Even somewhere like Metro Detroit, to be Black or brown in the Western world is to be confronted with the fact that your existence is political, sometimes even violent, constantly caught between cultures and unspoken ways of existing. It can be exhausting, and at least in my experience as an Arab womxn, if you try to confront those things, it’s considered 3aib (shameful).

But poetry becomes a space for imagination and helps us navigate the shared experiences that we are all moving through. Youssef’s fragmented lines create a space where silence and language are both active. Her writing encapsulates so many ways of being at once, and honors the human experience in a way where grief, resilience, and a hope for a better future can coexist so that we can find moments of wholeness.

– Julia, August 2026

Julia Koza is an Iraqi-American artist based in Detroit whose practice conveys themes of memory, identity, and diasporic connections. Through photographs and moving images, their work acts as an extension of their dreams of a queer feminist future.