Text Messages
CBC Books | | Posted: September 8, 2020 9:33 PM | Last Updated: September 28, 2020
Yassin Alsalman
Text Messages is the first multi-genre collection by Montreal-based Iraqi hip-hop artist, activist, and professor Yassin "Narcy" Alsalman. Composed entirely on a smartphone during air travel and married to artwork from comrades, Narcy's writing speaks of the existential crises experienced by diasporic children of war before and during imperialism in the age of the Internet.
Narcy's verses span the space between hip-hop and manifesto, portraying a crumbling, end-stage capitalist society, visions for a new reality, and exposes the myth of multiculturalism in post-9/11 North America. The wordsmith hollows and transmogrifies the grotesque excess of the West by juxtaposing McLife with images of death, destruction, and trauma in the East.
From the depths of apathetic consumerism arises a voice of spiritual self-realization that explodes the misrepresented, mythical monolith of Islam in the West and with the rubble builds healing through intelligent resistance and radical love. (From Fernwood Publishing)
Yassin "Narcy" Alsalman is an Iraqi Canadian musician, director, writer and actor from Montreal. He performs music under the name "Narcy," and has released several albums. He is also the author of the book Diatribes of a Dying Tribe.