Is love worth enduring all the struggles life promises? Embark on the poetic and age-old journey of a heart torn between East and West, sun and moon. Experience true isolation, voicelessness, and a barren world that transcends borders, time, and place. From barefoot in the desert sands to lost in the urban jungles of America, Rain and Embers reaches a place few ever find—the depths of our shared … our shared human existence. After surviving the trials and tribulations life throws at us, we re-emerge in the warm and tender hands of love.
After all, what are we without those brief moments of happiness? When all the ashes wash away, beauty remains in the wreckage, waiting to bloom once more.
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Rain and Embers This little book of poetry has the potential to transform you. To tear you apart and reassemble you in such a way that you will not be quite the same afterward. I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t a work of fiction; this was and is someone’s life. A life shared in part by millions of people around the world who have led lives full of suffering, people continuing to struggle under our culture of militaristic imperialism and indifference that permits it to go on. If you don’t feel broken while reading this, especially at the beginning, your apathy is likely part of the problem. I was completely engrossed in the heartbreaking story unfolding within the first few poems.
Stark, yet stunningly beautiful. Raw, complex and yet at times, simple (so one would think). I do not read much in the way of poetry; however, reading about the author made me curious. I read this book in one sitting. The words ensnaring me so that I had to continue to the end. Brutal, scary; yes. Enlightening and redemptive; absolutely.
My review cannot capture how the poems will move you… how they moved me. To think, to learn, to perhaps even cry when you hope that humanity exists even in moments of inhumanity. I’ll ponder the words I just finished reading, and then read this book again to see what I missed the first time.
A very relatable and powerful book. Any first-generation or second-generation immigrant can relate to the poet’s words and journey. There is a raw beauty in the pain he manages to convey – this pain of the lives he and his family lived through and the pain of him not being able to come to terms with the injustice of it all until he was much older. I love the poetic flow mixed with narrative storytelling he utilized to describe the traumatizing experiences he had as a refugee. The book covered the different phases of his difficult life, from leaving Iraq, to living through a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, to coming to America and realizing that he was still seen as an unwanted intruder in his new home, yet finding love and forgiveness in spite of it all. I read this book in a flat two hours, unable to put it down. This book touches anyone who has struggled to accept who they are and assimilate to a society that refuses to welcome them as one of their own
In Rain and Embers, Ali Nuri, an American of Iraqi origin, has written a tell-all about his challenging life and the great love of his life. But, in the words of Emily Dickinson, he has “told it slant.” Meaning that he uses the medium of poetic storytelling. I especially identified with and enjoyed his poems about the one great love of his life. Nuri’s early life as a refugee seeking asylum and safety from oppression can only be described as something no child–anyone–should ever have to experience. I am so grateful that he found both the words and inner passion to bare his beautiful soul to his readers.
Ali Nuri has written an eloquent collection of poetry .His riveting work pulls at our souls. The place between East and West is explored with depth and longing Both rejection and acceptance are experienced .Several lines are especially touching The author writes The truth is always a letter waiting to be written A letter to every single second that continues to escape me
A book of poems that opens your eyes to a world that needs to be heard and seen. Well written.