Sunflower Wounds

By Mostofa Sarwar

A survivor of one genocide watches another unfold on his screen and answers with poetry.

When Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv, Bangladeshi-American poet Mostofa Sarwar recognized an old wound reopening: the 1971 Bangladesh genocide he survived as a young man.

Sunflower Wounds is his response. This fierce, grieving, darkly satirical collection of war poetry captures how we witness modern atrocity, mediated through livestreams, viral videos, and social media feeds.

In these pages, a woman handing sunflower seeds to a soldier becomes Athena in disguise. Prometheus faces a two-headed Russian eagle. The fish of the Black Sea sing defiance to a sunken warship. Ukraine echoes through Dhaka, Aleppo, and Vietnam.

This collection connects the war in Ukraine to every history of imperial violence, and to the resilience that outlasts it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 160801410X
• ISBN13: 9781608014101
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
• Length: 86 Pages
• Weight: 0.27 lbs.