This innovative Afrofuturist memoir returns in a second edition with a new introduction by Douglas Kearney. Said Shaiye's cross-genre debut Are You Borg Now? blends nonfiction and poetry in an experimental interview the author conducts with his younger self, rejecting the conventions of memoir and what is expected of who writes them, specifically when that writer is an immigrant. Are You Borg Now? cyphers with trauma through a poetics of refusal via hard and beautiful language. Finding vigor in Islam and mirrors in Star Trek: Voyager, Shaiye shifts achingly between memory and improvisation.

Said Shaiye is an Autistic + ADHD (AuDHD) Somali Writer, Photographer & Filmmaker from Galkaiyo, Nairobi, Seattle & Minneapolis. He received a MacDowell Fellowship in 2024, as well as a Minnesota State Arts Education Grant. His grant project facilitated a BIPOC Autistic Writing Workshop where members published an anthology at year's end. The first edition of Are You Borg Now? was a 2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. He has published poetry & prose in Indiana Review, Texas Review, Obsidian, Brittle Paper, Pithead Chapel, 580 Split, Entropy, Diagram, and elsewhere. He teaches writing at several Twin Cities community colleges, as well as with Unrestricted Interest, an organization dedicated to Neurodivergent ways of being. He has probably already blocked you on everything. If he hasn't, he will definitely block you now. Yes, even at the United States Postal Service. Send all block appeals & business inquiries to www.saidshaiye.com.

"Are You Borg now? heralds the arrival of a bold and important voice. Shaiye's deeply personal self-interrogation blurs genre and form to examine how intersections between culture, race, class, gender and nationality shape one's identity. Vulnerable, affecting, humorous and haunting, so often I clutched my chest and nodded in agreement to Shaiye's keen observations. The reflections collected in these pages will benefit all who read this book." — Donald Quist

"Why should one write? This is the question that pervades Said Shaiye's experimental approach to memoir in Are You Borg Now? This book offers many different kinds of answers to such a question, answers that involve facing the effects of trauma and violence with courage, honesty, and a willingness to risk vulnerability. One reason to write is to call forth a voice in solidarity with others who suffer. Shaiye is a writer who transforms the pain of alienation into beautifully lyric writing and from that writing springs a profound faith that one is never really alone." — Kathryn Nuernberger

"This book cut me as it wowed me. Shaiye can't help it. He invites you in. But he doesn't want you there. He doesn't want to be there himself, but needs to be. On every page, I found a reflection of an America that sickens and alienates with its easy fast food and easy pop culture. But then, Shaiye recognizes quality, too. And you recognize yourself in it even as you gain Shaiye's very particular viewpoint. Every page you find Shaiye struggling to be okay, to be good, to both honor his culture and struggle to move it forward towards health. This is an honorable project. This is a courageous project. This is the Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man." — Geoff Herbach