INTO EACH ROOM WE ENTER WITHOUT KNOWING
Into each room we enter without knowing
Navigating the complexities of inheritance, race, and the queer self
Published in 2017 as part of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing marks the arresting debut of Charif Shanahan. A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, this collection serves as a lyrical excavation of the self within a "wounded and divided world." Shanahan, who is queer and mixed-race, confronts a complex cultural inheritance shaped by his mother’s immigration from Morocco to the United States and the long shadows of colonialism.
The poems in this volume are both poised and unrelenting. Shanahan navigates the rigid constructs of race and the fluidity of sexuality with a precision that demands the reader's full attention. He moves across the globe and through the intimate spaces of family history to ask fundamental questions about human connection: who are we to each other, and, perhaps more painfully, who are we to ourselves when the world insists on categorizing us?
To read Charif Shanahan is to witness the search for a home within one's own skin. His work refuses easy answers, opting instead to inhabit the "rooms" of memory and identity without knowing exactly what lies inside. It is a vital contribution to contemporary poetry, offering a voice that is as vulnerable as it is courageous, reminding us that the process of becoming is often a journey through the very divisions that seek to define us.
The Geography of the Soul
"Who we are to each other . . . who we are to ourselves." Shanahan’s lines are a bridge over the fractures of history and blood.
In this work, we discover that the rooms we enter without knowing are often the very parts of ourselves we have been taught to fear.