Title & author
Like a Bird by Fariha Róisín
Synopsis
In Like A Bird, we follow Taylia, a young American of Indian and Jewish ancestry, as she navigates life after experiencing multiple traumas. Yet, while Róisín writes about these moments, they are not the focus. Róisín shows that “survivor” is not a label to slap onto individuals out of petty or without consent, as not everyone wants to be considered as such. Nor is being a “survivor” one-dimensional. Rather, it can exist in tandem with resilience, prosperity, and growth.
Who should read this book
Fans of You Exist Too Much and Know My Name
What we’re thinking about
The strength of chosen families
Trigger warning(s)
Sexual violence, substance abuse, self-harm, abandonment, sexism, mental health
“I wanted to write something about resilience…This book is for survivors. I believe in a world where we forgive ourselves. I believe in a world where we thrive.” In the acknowledgments of her debut novel Like a Bird (The Unnamed Press, 2020), poet and activist Fariha Róisín writes these words. Throughout the novel, we readers follow Taylia, a young American of Indian and Jewish ancestry, as she navigates life after experiencing multiple traumas. Yet, while Róisín writes about these moments, they are not the focus. Róisín shows that “survivor” is not a label to slap onto individuals out of petty or without consent, as not everyone wants to be considered as such. Nor is being a “survivor” one-dimensional. Rather, it can exist in tandem with resilience, prosperity, and growth.
Within the first seventy pages of the novel, we witness Taylia’s life turn upside down. As a result, she leaves home, forced to be independent. “I wondered what it would be like to eat, to live, to survive as Taylia now” (Róisín, 83). On her own, Taylia realizes she has the opportunity to exist fully as herself, whatever she might choose that to look like, leaving behind an identity shaped by those who surrounded her. So when she takes a job at her new friend Kat’s cafe and moves into her spare room, she “wanted to become [her] own witness” (93).
And then, we witness as she begins to thrive—falling in and out of love, building new friendships, finding new hobbies, and much more. The trauma exists, and she feels it out of nowhere at times, but it exists alongside the good. “I changed when I walked out of my parents’ house. I had started betting on myself” (197). Taylia grows into herself, with the help of her new, chosen family. “‘I’m not a victim,’” Taylia tells Kat. “‘But I have felt like one, I have felt like one my whole life. It was a role I felt prescribed to me because I felt unworthy of being a survivor. Even way before the rape I felt like I didn’t deserve to even live. That my body, my soul, was only a carrier of pain, and that I would never be good enough’” (279). Taylia chooses the term survivor for herself, describing what the identity means to her. She comes to understand who she is, defining herself and pushing aside societal expectations, stereotypes, and limits associated with the term.
There’s so much packed into this novel, a story that Róisín wrote over the span of ten years. Time itself becomes an illusion; suddenly we are at the end and two years have passed since Taylia left home. But that’s because, in this space of resilience and self-growth, time does not matter. Who are we to determine how long healing takes? “We’ve been socialized to wonder why when acts of violence are committed against us,” Taylia says, and she’s right—we focus on the victim (279). Such as “why did this happen to me?” or “why can’t she move on?” But what about challenging and addressing what in our society enables and perpetuates this trauma? What about working to fix these acts of violence instead of putting that work on those who then face them?
“I am good enough,” Taylia asserts. “I’m so fucking good enough’” (279).
“Women were not believed, were hunted and killed, and I had survived. I would do something of this life, I would make it mine. I had to learn how to do that, at the very least.”
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How does Taylia’s chosen family shape her as she grows into herself?
What role does trauma play in the narrative? How is it used as a vehicle for the story without defining Taylia?
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