Diode Editions, 2025. $18.00 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-939728-70-8
Review by Ella Reynolds
An achingly raw and intimate collection of personal experience and docupoetics, We Had Mansions, written by Mandy Shunnarah, combines the historical background of Palestine and its people with Shunnarah’s own unique, modern-day experience, resulting in a work that is as beautiful as it is unflinchingly defiant in the face of discrimination and attack.
Shunnarah’s debut poetry collection We Had Mansions is simultaneously a love song and a lament: it is a celebration of Shunnarah’s Palestinian heritage, queerness, positive body image, and love. It also explores Shunnarah’s complex struggles with being a queer Palestinian in America, their complicated relationship with religion, and acts as a testament to the continuing hardships faced by Palestinians all over the world. Although We Had Mansions illustrates the hurts Palestinians have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of displacement and genocide with raw candor, it is not a poetry collection about suffering; it recognizes resilience and honors the love and hope that continues to be ever-present in Palestinian culture.
Shunnarah’s poetry is marked by a confessional voice, drawing on personal experience and emotional vulnerability; the subject matters of their poems are deeply personal to them, and the importance of these topics is evident through the raw, uninhibited, and candid way in which they are described, as if they are confiding in the reader. The poetry collection opens with a couplet: “Sedo told me once our last name means partridge—/that sweet little bird in the pear tree every Christmas” (19). Later in the poem, Shunnarah describes how partridges are land-dwelling birds, and that they were “put in pear trees against their will—branches like an open air prison/the world ignores because at least they can still see the sky” (19). The confessional voice is established through the mention of “Sedo,” an Arabic word which means “grandfather.”. Shunnarah’s grandparents, who moved from Palestine to America, are constants in We Had Mansions. Their recurrence establishes their immense importance in Shunnarah’s childhood as well as their adult life, acting as physical manifestations for Shunnarah’s Palestinian heritage, their connection to their homeland, generational trauma and gender roles, and the preservation of culture. Shunnarah writes that their “grandfather didn’t want to leave the old country,” but felt as if “to escape exile he had to exile himself” (24).
Although We Had Mansions illustrates the hurts Palestinians have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of displacement and genocide with raw candor, it is not a poetry collection about suffering; it recognizes resilience and honors the love and hope that continues to be ever-present in Palestinian culture.
By sharing the history of their family, Shunnarah is both creating a space for emotional vulnerability to exist between themself and the reader and offering background information that is vital to understanding the unique relationship they have with their heritage. Shunnarah longs for the land their grandparents fled from, which they did not out of a lack of love for Palestine, but out of hope that America would offer opportunities to themselves and their children. By divulging their grandparents’ story, Shunnarah fosters an emotional relationship with the reader, which in turn allows the reader to better understand Shunnarah’s experience and identity as a Palestinian.
Their confessional voice also enables them to speak candidly about their relationship with gender, body image, and religion, and in doing so minimizes the space between the poet and the poetry. On the topic of their body, they refer to their stretch marks as “tabby stripes,/a vertical shimmer where skin grew to accommodate more of me,” allowing the reader to be privy to vulnerable and personal details about themself not only as a poet but also as a person (30). Similarly, their relationship with and ideas about religion and the connection it shares with Palestine is the subject matter of multiple poems such as “the great falastini,” “everyone’s favorite palestinian,” and “jesus was trans,” which also touch upon the idea of gender. Shunnarah’s hope for Palestinian voices to be heard and for their humanity to be recognized by the world is achieved through the confessional voice that marks their poetry.
Shunnarah’s We Had Mansions also includes a variety of forms of poetry, ranging from open, free-verse to more close-structured forms. Their use of ghazals and odes in particular establishes the themes of longing, loss, love, and celebration that are present throughout the collection. The ghazal form is often used to convey melancholy, love, loss, and other similar emotions, which are key themes in poems such as “prayer ghazal,” an expostulation on how Arabs welcomed refugees who then colonized them, and “a falling in love ghazal,” a tender poem about the poet’s love for their beloved, each couplet ending with “habibi”, which translates to “my love.”
Shunnarah writes in the ode form not only to celebrate ideas, but to ignite conversation and to encourage the dismantling and reforming of patriarchal systems in society.
Odes are also a recurring form in We Had Mansions, which are often used to celebrate a person, place, thing, or concept. In “ode to short nails,” Shunnarah illustrates and celebrates queerness, particularly in AFAB individuals, by using the ode form to amplify the significance of fingers and fingernails in the sapphic scene. This ode celebrates Shunnarah’s identity as a queer individual as well as sapphism on a larger scale; similarly, “ode to cows and clitorises” is a poem about female sexuality that acts as a raw commentary on the lack of research in modern medicine for women. Shunnarah writes in the ode form not only to celebrate ideas, but to ignite conversation and to encourage the dismantling and reforming of patriarchal systems in society.
We Had Mansions is a collection of poetry that encapsulates not only Shunnarah’s experience as a Palestinian in America, but as a Palestinian who is queer, as a Palestinian who has loved and lost, as a Palestinian who struggles and overcomes again and again—that is to say, as a human. Shunnarah’s confessional voice and their use of a variety of poetic forms creates a bond between poet and reader that ultimately fosters a space of emotional vulnerability, and in doing so causes the already-forthright subject matters of their poems to evolve further in intensity.
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born, Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer who now calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and others. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was published in July 2024 by Belt Publishing. Their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2025. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.
Ella Reynolds is an undergraduate at Western Michigan University pursuing a degree in English Literature and Language with a double minor in Classical Studies and Marketing. She completed an internship with Third Coast in Fall 2025. In addition to coursework, she writes for the university newspaper and enjoys attending live music shows.
