If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar

This imaginative, soulful debut poetry collection from One World/ Random House captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America. Orphaned as a girl, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people’s histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging. [author’s website]

Shyma Golden, who did the cover illustration stated on her website:

“The tone of the book is of defiant celebration and I wanted to reflect that in the cover. The various elements have symbolic meanings attached to the author’s life and metaphors referenced in her poetry.”

The typeface, Columbia Sans, was chosen and set by Random House’s art director Sharanya Durvasula. Golden redrew the letters on top of the layout, using Procreate app on the iPad pro, to give a brush lettering feel to the cover.

The cover went through many stages (two in-process stages are displayed below), adjusting and fine-tuning the layout, illustration and lettering. The most significant modification for the lettering was that the verticals of all uppercase M’s were eventually sloped.