Text Messages

Or How I Found Myself Time Travelling

by Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman  

Text Messages is the first multi-genre collection by Montreal-based Iraqi hip-hop artist, activist, and professor Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman.

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  • October 2020
  • ISBN: 9781773632964
  • 200 pages
  • $27.00
  • For sale in Canada
  • Audiobook May 2021
  • ISBN: 9781773632988
  • $26.99
  • For sale worldwide
  • EPUB October 2020
  • ISBN: 9781773633411
  • $26.99
  • For sale in Canada
  • Kindle October 2020
  • ISBN: 9781773633428
  • $26.99
  • For sale in Canada
  • PDF October 2020
  • ISBN: 9781773634487
  • $26.99
  • For sale in Canada

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About the book

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 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.

“Young boys and girls trapped in Walmarts— our consumer interim camps. A family-friendly, discounted freedom. You don’t see what the Internet can’t.

Not our land or home. Not your mans or holmes. Not your towers or domes. Not your power or drones.”

Poetry

What people are saying

Talib Kweli

“Yassin Alsalman possesses one of the most important voices in the world, and Text Messages could not be more timely or more necessary of a read. On paper, this Muslim teacher who raps should not be a success, but because of the beauty of his words and the pureness of his heart, he wins despite the massive odds against him. Narcy makes me feel heard, he gives me life. I am proud to be his friend and his peer.”

Fariha Róisín, author, How To Cure a Ghost

“Yassin ‘Narcy’ Alsalman is a one-of-a-kind artist. He is transcendental, he is pop, he is the Muslim, he is the poet. Through his questioning of the tides of time, and the world’s disregard of the Arab, he writes lyrics as anthem, providing a source material for a part of the world that is so often misunderstood and forgotten. This book is exciting in its futurity. It is punchy in its enthusiasm. I am grateful for this book’s aliveness.”

Hasan Minhaj

“Passion, pain, anger, hope, and swagger. Yassin is a man from the future. Narcy beautifully captures the chaotic multitudes of being a brown diaspora kid living through the war on terror in the technology age. Text Messages is an ambitious and bold time capsule capturing the insane times we’re living through. Poems, barbs, and bars — take a bow, Yassin, you’ve made a classic.”

Author

Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman

Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman is a polymath. He is renowned as a pioneer of the Arab voice in hip-hop culture and one of the formative voices from the Iraqi diaspora. He is a professor at Concordia University, an award-winning music video director, an actor, and a celebrated musician. Most importantly, he is a father of two.

Contents

  • Introduction
  • Verses
  • World War Free Now
  • The Q
  • Verses (cont’d)
  • Hashim: A Life Unfinished
  • Acknowledgements
  • Credits

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