Tasl?m: We Are the Prophets

This volume of pithy, defiant poetry and prose explore the burden of taslīm--an oral transmission of heritage and ancestral knowledge--on Coptic Orthodox women. These poems highlight the ways in which Coptic women navigate 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 sacrifice and submission, even in diaspora. Taslīm in the Christian minority of Egypt becomes an even more rigid bind in immigrant communities abroad. This book is ultimately a feminist manifesto for freedom, and the choice to live and desire out loud.

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.