This collection travels through a daughter's childhood memories in Montreal, her mother's homeland of Lebanon, and the dark realities of grief across borders. Min Hayati uncovers the well of sorrow and the depth of love discovered only through loss. Poetry pays homage to the author's maternal lineage, her mixed ethnicity, and the ways in which "mother" transcends all aspects of life.

Min Hayati advocates for a radical change in our approach to grief and the (still) taboo subjects of death, dying, and grief. Poems speak in particular to motherless-daughters around the world. Most importantly, the poet's Arab roots sets her apart as a Canadian poet with a different story.

Rayya Liebich is an international award-winning Canadian poet of Lebanese and Polish descent. Passionate about writing as a tool for transformation, she teaches creative writing classes to youth, adults, and seniors. Her 2015 collection, Tell Me Everything, won the Golden Grassroots Chapbook Award. Winner of the Kootenay Literary Competition in 2005, the Geneva Literary Award in 2015, and the Richard Carver Award for emerging writers in 2019, her poetry has also appeared in a number of national and international journals. She has worked as a writer in residence through ArtStarts BC in six West Kootenay schools, and leads the Teen Creative Writing Club at the Nelson Public Library. She lives in Nelson, BC.

Rayya Liebich's profile page

"Rayya Liebich's debut collection presents bereavement's value as a tribute to love. Her mother's unexpected death in Geneva is treated with a tenderness and respect that is unusual in North America. Min Hayati unfolds with joy and delights that will make you weep. Rayya Liebich is a poet of elegance and grace, sagacity and wit."
-Susan Andrews Grace, author of Philosopher at the Skin Edge of Being

"To make sense of her mother's death, Rayya Liebich has created a collection of acute, aching poems that explore the themes of grief''s spectrum: disbelief, anger, sadness, loneliness, acceptance and reconciliation. Liebich's imagery is infused with the physical body, the very marrow of being alive, which she deftly weaves with everyday objects that startle with sudden meaning. This collection will move you, cradle you in a longing for homeland, of what it means to lose, and it will land you in a place of slow, alluring reclamation."
-Tara Cunningham, Editor, Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine