Us and Them

Maybe we all forget what's most familiar,

because what's most familiar

is the air we breathe,

which, like our own scent,

is only odorless to us.

Watching you was like watching

someone I should know

stumbling through life,

oblivious of how beautiful

he truly is.

From his childhood years in a small mountain town in West Africa to a chance encounter with a food vendor in Haiti, Ramin Gillett's first collection of poetry, Us and Them, explores the delicate tension that exists between the ways we alienate each other and our collective desire for identity and belonging.

Ramin draws upon his unique background of navigating multiple cultural realities to explore the vastness and diversity of the human landscape, simultaneously challenging us to go beyond our narrow lenses and embrace a larger reality, one that allows for forgiveness and healing.

Us and Them illuminates what it means to be alive in an age of intensifying polarization and xenophobia.