Taslīm by Carolyn Ramzy

These poems by an author of Coptic (Egyptian Christian Orthodox) daughter of immigrants, depict, explore, and question the burden of Taslim ("Commandments") on Coptic girls. Taslim is the "oral transmission of heritage and ancestral knowledge." The poems highlight the ways in which diaspora Coptic women navigate taslīm or the responsibilities of transmitting ancestral knowledge while reckoning with its costs: deferred joy and pleasure until the afterlife, an almost compulsory notion of motherhood, and a gendered comportment of ascetic and martyr living, even in diaspora. Taslim in the insecure Christian minority of Egypt became a rigid bind in the immigrant communities abroad.

(From Mawenzi House Publishers) 

Carolyn Ramzy is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at Carleton University. She looks at Egyptian Coptic Christian music-making and themes of gender, sexuality and disapora belonging. She is based in Ottawa.