“You gotta find reflections of yourself however you can to survive this country,” writes Said Shaiye in this innovative AF (Afrofuturist) memoir. Are You Borg Now cyphers with trauma through a poetics of refusal via hard and beautiful language. Finding vigor in Islam and mirrors in Star Trek: Voyager, Shaiye shifts achingly between memory and improvisation. This is a serious debut.
—Douglas Kearney, Author of Sho
Are You Borg now? heralds the arrival of a bold and important voice. Shaiye’s deeply personal self-interrogation blurs genre and form to examine how intersections between culture, race, class, gender and nationality shape one’s identity. Vulnerable, affecting, humorous and haunting, so often I clutched my chest and nodded in agreement to Shaiye’s keen observations. The reflections collected in these pages will benefit all who read this book.
—Donald Quist, Author of Harbors & For Other Ghosts