Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2025, pp. 73-74
Arab American Activism
COMMUNITY MEMBERS celebrated Palestinian American poet, writer, editor and community activist Zeina Azzam at the Charles E. Beatley Jr. Central Library on April 12. Azzam concluded her three-year term as Poet Laureate of the City of Alexandria, VA, surrounded by public officials, family, friends and the poets she has mentored who all praised her talents as well as her advocacy for human rights. Tributes offered testaments to her personal characteristics and her role as a community leader: “She always made time for us…she said ‘yes,’ when we asked…she made us proud of our heritage…she fought hate and discrimination.”
Azzam thanked Alexandria for “making this city home to me,” after she moved in 2011. She said she learned so much about the rich history and culture of Alexandria during her tenure. As she researched and wrote poems for her city, Azzam said she found inspiration and a new poetic voice. She read her poem, “Like the Trees in Alexandria,” which honors the city’s diversity: “So many shades of green and brown…Our root systems teach us to behave as a single organism, to uplift all branches, young and old, she and he and they, watering and nourishing each other, safeguarding saplings against injustice. This is our present and our legacy. We are the trees in Alexandria’s forest.”
During her tenure as the first Arab American Poet Laureate in Alexandria, Azzam wrote poems for her city’s jazz festivals, 4th of July celebrations, Alexandria’s 275th birthday, Martin Luther King Day commemorations, Sept. 11 remembrance ceremonies, domestic abuse awareness month, a rally against gun violence by Moms Demand Action and a moving poem asking forgiveness from the Black bodies buried during and after the Civil War in Alexandria’s Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery. That poem rails against injustice in our country, “When shackling Black bodies was the law of the land, when segregation and racial discrimination, poll taxes and literacy tests, Jim Crow and white supremacy were everywhere, the air everyone breathed,” and concludes with words that also resonated with supporters of Palestine in the audience: “Rest in peace, our ancestors. Rest in power. Rest in justice. Rest in dignity. Rest in truth. Rest in freedom.”
Zeina Azzam’s brother Fateh, who traveled from Maine with his wife for the occasion, confessed that his younger sister has become his teacher in humanity. While we are living in a difficult moment amidst crude, divisive hatred, he said there is a consistent message in her poetry: “We are in this together with no differences between us.”
Rose Esber noted that Azzam is also an educator and since 2016 she has mentored Palestinian poets in Gaza who are learning to tell their stories in a program called We Are Not Numbers, which the Washington Report works with to bring the voices of Gaza writers to our readers. (See articles on pp. 10-19.) She now communicates with those poets who call or text her during this ongoing genocide and conveys to them they are not alone. Azzam also makes things happen in workshops and local rights coalitions, Esber said, “and this very busy woman took the time to bring me soup when I was sick.”
An activist read aloud Azzam’s powerful poem, “Write My Name,” which Azzam shared at the United Nations and has been translated into many languages. She wrote it in 2023 when she heard that some parents in Gaza have resorted to writing their children’s names on their legs with markers to help identify them should either they or the children be killed.
The Office of Historic Alexandria collected the poems she was asked to write for official occasions in a lovely booklet that was given to attendees of her final event as poet laureate. Throughout her term she bonded with advocates supporting varied righteous causes who are “safeguarding saplings against injustice.” Undoubtedly, along her way Azzam opened minds, built sturdy relationships and linked those branches together to also support justice for Palestinians. Her full-length poetry collection Some Things Never Leave You: Poems by Zeina Azzam, published in 2023, is available from Middle East Books and More. Her readers eagerly await her next volume.
—Delinda C. Hanley
