"Finely crafted debut collection . . . . From his citizenship interview to a final meditation on the past as he asks his daughter to repeat her sentences in Arabic, Almallah’s poetry-cum-memoir doesn’t shout but with pointed, persistent, limpid lines minimized to the very essence sums up loss and fractured identity as sharply as any jeremiad."

Library Journal

"Almallah explores the themes of family, home and identity in fluid language. The free verse of the poems allows for a deeper exploration of the construction of culture. . . . In accessible verse, Bitter English brings to the forefront the displacement in every aspect of the immigrant experience, and Almallah's distinctive voice manages to put this ineffable experience into words."

Shelf Awareness

"The poems in Ahmad Almallah’s debut collection, Bitter English, relate the story of a Palestinian man who, having immigrated to America in his youth, finds himself torn between his life in the United States and the family and language he left behind. . . . That’s the great contribution that Bitter English offers to our moment: Almallah knows that great poems are often made by the poet’s integration of two seemingly inharmonious ideas or tendencies. Throughout his collection, such challenging doubleness appears in the recurring image of the man with two passports. It also makes for tonal dualities."

Public Books

"When Ahmad Almallah’s debut collection, Bitter English, came out in 2019, a new planet swam into the ken of contemporary poetry. Here was a poet like no other. The poems in Bitter English relate the narrative of a Palestinian man who finds himself wrenched between his life in the United States and his place, family, and language of origin. With remarkable lyric intensity, Almallah makes art out of a discontentment with language itself."

Great River Review

“Ahmad Almallah’s Bitter English is a book of prismatic pulsations writ against moving backgrounds. These counterpaeans are balm to the exiled and grieving—and to all of us newly arriving.”

Charles Bernstein, author of Near/Miss

“Almallah is a true original, apparent from the first time I heard him read a poem aloud, years ago. As a follower of his terrific work, I am delighted to see it brought together in Bitter English. His poetry, both fresh and frank, entrances readers through astonishing, breathtaking ways of unfolding. Almallah’s writing is immensely relevant; we need his voice."

Naomi Shihab Nye, author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle

“‘I wanted to write a love poem but instead / I watched the news’ begins a poem in Ahmad Almallah’s wrenching collection, in which the news is terrible, the familiar is inscrutable, and the structures—of language, home, disaster, family, citizenship, consciousness—are broken. With grief, rage, and a fierce love, Almallah dares himself to imagine with ‘this english tongue I use’—in line waiting for stamps or recycling plastics—and what harrowing poems his bitter English has wrought.”

Donna Masini, author of 4:30 Movie

"In his 2019 debut collection Bitter English, Almallah gives us finely crafted poems that reflect his own experience of living in American exile while yearning for his home in Palestine, his mother tongue Arabic, and his mother, who struggles with Alzheimer's."

Middle East Eye