FASTING FOR RAMADAN: Notes from a Spiritual Practice (Tupelo Press Lineage Series)

Kazim Ali’s searching descriptions of the Ramadan sensibility and its arduous but liberating annual rite of communal fasting is sure to be a revelation to many readers ― intellectually illuminating and aesthetically exhilarating.
Fasting for Ramadan is structured as a chronicle of daily meditations, during two cycles of the 30-day rite of daytime abstinence required by Ramadan for purgation and prayer. Estranged in certain ways from his family’s cultural traditions when he was younger, Ali has in recent years re-embraced the Ramadan ritual, and brings to this rediscovery an extraordinary delicacy of reflection, a powerfully inquiring mind, and the linguistic precision and ardor of a superb poet.

Kazim Ali is author of two volumes of poetry, THE FAR MOSQUE (Alice James Books, 2005) and The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions, 2008), four books of prose—the novels QUINN'S PASSAGE (BlazeVOX Books, 2004) and THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SETH (Etruscan Press, 2009); a collection of critical writing, Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence (University of Michigan Press, 2010), and the inspirational memoir FASTING FOR RAMADAN (Tupelo Press, 2011)—as well as a mixed-genre book, Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), finalist for the Ohioana Book Award for Poetry and the Lantern Award for Memoir. Born to Indian parents living in England and raised in Canada and the U.S., Ali has worked as a political organizer, lobbyist, yoga instructor, and professor. Founding editor of Nightboat Books, he now teaches at Creative Writing and Literature at Oberlin College and in the University of Southern Maine's low-residency M.F.A. program.