Kazim Ali is a multi-genre author, having published multiple poetry books, fictional novels, and books of nonfiction. Ali stands at an intersection of identities. As the child of Indian parents, who grew up living transnationally in the UK, Canada, India, and later France and the Middle East, he possesses a firsthand perspective on cultural and ethnic interplay. Ali's identifications as gay and Muslim also contribute to his unique perspective as a writer. He claims this complex interrelation of identity led to him becoming “someone who questioned established political, social, and gender norms” 1). In the anthology commentary included with the poem “Ramadan,” Ali is quoted as saying he sees poetry as a way “that the individual body can express its own personhood and value in the face of faceless systems” 2).
Ali's faith has been a central influence on his writing. In fact, he professes that the verses of the Qu'ran that his father whispered in his ears as a baby were his first introduction to poetry 3). Yet, Ali forges his own path to faith, balancing the traditional with his own sense of the sacred, stating, “I'd rather be wandering in a trance through the streets of a busy city, peeling an orange and whispering to the universe than sitting in a pew listening to a sermon or kneeling on a rug reciting chapters” 4). Ali claims that the questions religion poses are questions not only about God but about how people can live together as individuals in community 5).
In Kazim Ali's Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cites, he writes about his time in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. While Ali's writing captures his unique experiences and identity, there is a universality to his writing. Particularly with his writing in Pennsylvania, the wanderings around graveyards and contemplation of identity between how family sees him versus his ability to live free with friends, rings true to any kid growing up in PA who does not fit into the status quo. It beautifully captures the mundane nature of Pennsylvania while highlighting how the same nature allows for inward exploration through the external landscape. Excerpt:
“Carlisle where soldiers are trained and Indians were brought to be forced to forget.
Never did I think when I arrived there that it would be the place I would sort myself out and dark to actually speak.
Nothing happened there but time.
Going in the morning to the coffee shop to read or to write.
How ordinary the most important things are.
The green copper roofs of the buildings against the steel blue-gray of the Central Pennsylvania sky. You could look at anything and understand…
To drown in a river or to lift the water up and let the drowning be your guide.
I trudge along the street unbaptized and criminal according to some religious laws.
Lonely brother, middle child, only son.
Is it written on my skin, my friend asks. Is that why you could never go on pilgrimage, never go to Mecca.
Why is it I would want go to Mecca. Because there a stone fell from the sky.
But more importantly than that small thing. That is where a mother refused to believe….” 9).
During an Interlochen Review interview Q & A, he expanded on this connection to PA and explained how Bright Felon was written,
“I wrote the whole book in Carlisle, because I was teaching at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania but living in New York City. So I was doing this crazy back and forth between Marble Hill and Carlisle at the same time, but most of that book I wrote in Carlisle. Some of the sections I took from journals that I kept—some of the Cairo section was taken from a journal, most of the Washington D.C. section of the book was taken from my journals—and some of it was written in the immediate, but most was written after in retrospective. The only exception was the epilogue, which was about Barcelona and actually written there in Barcelona.” 10)