Suheir Hammad
سهير حماد
1973–
Amman, Jordan
Born to Palestinian refugee parents and raised on Brooklyn hip-hop, Hammad built a poetry of dispossession and defiance — from "First Writing Since" to the American Book Award–winning breaking poems.
Suheir Hammad was born in 1973 in Amman, Jordan, to Palestinian refugee parents from Lydda, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where her family immigrated when she was five. Raised on her grandparents’ stories of Palestine before 1948 and on Brooklyn’s hip-hop scene, she wove the two into a single narrative of dispossession — published first in Drops of This Story and Born Palestinian, Born Black (both 1996).
Her poem “First Writing Since,” written in the week after 11 September 2001, reached Russell Simmons, who signed her to HBO’s Def Poetry; she became an original writer and cast member of the Tony Award–winning Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Her collection breaking poems (2008), which channels hip-hop’s breaks and samples into elegies for Gaza, New Orleans, and other broken places, won the 2009 American Book Award. She also starred in Annemarie Jacir’s film Salt of This Sea (2008).
Selected works
- Born Palestinian, Born Black (1996)
- Drops of This Story (1996)
- ZaatarDiva (2006)
- breaking poems (2008)
Sources
Read more
Explore selected poems, essays, and biographical material on the linked source.
Explore Suheir HammadConnected in the archive
11 connected records11 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
written by them — 1 record
- break (clustered)
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: poetSlug: "suheir-hammad" → Suheir Hammad
named in this record — 2 records
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- Annemarie Jacirآن ماري جاسر
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: She also starred in Annemarie Jacir's film Salt of This Sea (2008).
- Lyddaاللد
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Suheir Hammad was born in 1973 in Amman, Jordan, to Palestinian refugee parents from Lydda, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where her family immigrated when she was five.
on a related subject — 8 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- George Abraham
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "Palestinian-American", "diaspora", "spoken word".
- Hala Alyan
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "Palestinian-American", "diaspora".
- Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "Palestinian-American", "diaspora".
- Naomi Shihab Nye
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "Palestinian-American", "diaspora".
- Palestinian Hip-Hop
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "diaspora", "hip-hop".
- Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "diaspora".
- and 2 more
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- Chicago
“Suheir Hammad.” Poetry, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/poetry/suheir-hammad.- MLA
“Suheir Hammad.” Poetry, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/poetry/suheir-hammad. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-suheir-hammad, title = {Suheir Hammad}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/poetry/suheir-hammad}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }