You Still Look the Same

A moving collection of poetry about navigating mid-life, full of humour and wit, from acclaimed novelist Farzana Doctor.This debut poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Farzana Doctor is both an intimate deep dive and a humorous glance at the tumultuous decade of her forties. Through crisp and vivid language, Doctor explores mid-life breakups and dating, female genital cutting, imprints of racism and misogyny, and the oddness of sex and love, and urges us to take a second look at the ways in which human relationships are never what we expect them to be.

Farzana Doctor is the Tkaronto-based author of four critically acclaimed novels: Stealing Nasreen, Six Metres of Pavement, All Inclusive, and Seven. You Still Look The Same is her debut poetry collection. Farzana is also the Maasi behind Dear Maasi, a new sex and relationships column for FGM/C survivors. She is also an activist and part-time psychotherapist.

ISBN: 9781990601057
Format: Paperback
Pages: 120
Publisher: Freehand Books
Published: May 01, 2022

"These poems are clean, tight, wry, luscious, kvetchy and up-close-to-brown-skin." SONNET L'ABBE author of Sonnet’s Shakespeare"In this collection, love, disappointment and possibility collide, at home and unhomed in spare, precise language." LARISSA LAI author of Iron Goddess of Mercy"These poems travel across a range of experiences, but what pulls them together is the essential yearning for connection - in defiance of pain and grief, in spite of anger, fear, exclusion and sheer human blundering. The voices here are vulnerable, imperfect, but they are bolstered by their wry wit and an irrepressible desire to embrace life and love with all its complications." ADAM SOL author of How a Poem Moves"Farzana Doctor's You Still Look the Same unfolds in filmic moments which cluster with insight, itches like the discomfort of a hard news story, yet reads with all the intimacy of confessional memoir. This is a book of observation from a keen eye for what it means to be human in the 21st century. Here is a book that invites us to see with fresh perspective what we might yet be." MICHAEL V. SMITH author of Bad Ideas"This book is a tender tour of the love, loss, and lament that comes with the messiness of living." DENA IGUSTI author of Cut Woman