To search for is not merely to look for a person. It is to search for a methodology of survival. It is to ask the question: How do I hold my grief and my joy in the same hand?
In a world that demands we perform our pain for clicks, Sharifa Jamila Smith offers a different way: she stitches it, prays over it, and places it on an altar. She reminds us that the Sacred Uprising is not a single event. It is a daily choice to remember that we are worthy of the love we are so desperate to give away.
Her debut chapbook, “Before the Whispers Become Curses,” is a staple in independent Black literary circles. Critics have compared her meter to a fusion of Audre Lorde’s fierce directness and Rumi’s ecstatic longing. A signature line that often circulates on social media (often misattributed to anonymous poets) is: “I am not trying to be a good Muslim. I am trying to be a free one.” This line encapsulates her struggle against patriarchal and orthodox constraints within religious spaces.
who specializes in the intersection of technology and ethics.
: She recently appeared in the musical Malle Babbe , performing as Anneke Grönloh. Other work includes the stage production Ruimtereis (Space Travel), where she played the character Lova.