seventhswan's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

2.25

I loved Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth, so I had such high hopes for this full-length collection - but I was disappointed. If I hadn't read any of Shire's earlier work, I might have liked this better, but many of the poems were reworks of poems I'd already read in TMMHTGB, and for me the earlier versions were better. I was especially heartbroken to see Trying To Swim With God stripped of its rhythm and everything that made me connect with it so strongly when I first read it. 

I don't think this is an outright bad collection - I wouldn't warn people off it, and there was the occasional poem, such as the one for Victoria Climbie, that I found moving. It just felt hollow to me, and overly pared back in comparison to TMMHTGB.

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glittery_phoenix's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

I saw a snippet of Warsan's poem "Home" on social media, and was so captivated by her writing that I immediately bought her book - despite not being a fan of poetry. 

Bless The Daughter reeled me in with each line of beautifully (and often painfully) written text. This book has triggered my new love & appreciation of poetry! It provides an incredible insight into her experiences and inner monologue.... so whether you can relate to it or learn from it, I can promise you that this book is powerful and a privilege to read. 

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leantonego's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.5

This poetry-memoir is a heartwrenching examination of what it means to be an immigrant, Muslim, and woman of color in the UK.

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ukponge's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0


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yinflower's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

4.25


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michaelion's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

2.25

I like poems that rhyme so this one just wasn't for me :/ There's a few good moments but it didn't really feel artistic. That doesn't take away from the art though, it just feels more like she had all these heavy things on her mind weighing her down that she just had to get out there and maybe she'd feel lighter after. FIVE stars for the art FIVE stars for the title.

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theliteraryteapot's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

4.0

Warsan Shire you have such a wonderful way with words.
Very sharp. Some beautiful metaphors (the moon and anything space-related always get me). Tearing the reader's heart apart.

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_chaoticbooknook's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense fast-paced

4.25

this is an evocative, emotional, and at times hard to read collection of poems talking about the experiences of young Black women, refugees borne from war, and a blend of both. layered over all of this is Shire’s tie to her homeland of Somalia and the complex feelings surrounded being forced from home and also slight relief of being in a less patriarchal society.

it’s short, it’s beautiful, it’s worth your time - the themes are relatable to all.


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decodethebooks's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

This is a beautifully written poetry collection from the lens of a Somali refugee, with religious and cultural pressures, through trials of girlhood and womanhood and the journey of healing from traumas.

a few quotes from the poems that I like:

from Extreme Girlhood*
- "A loop, a girl born
to each family
prelude to suffering."”
- "Everything you did to me,
I remember."
- "Mama I made it
out of your home
alive, raised by
the voices in my head."


from Assimilation*
- “we never unpacked”
- “unable to excise the refugee from our hearts”
- “I can’t get the refugee out of my body”
- “at each and every checkpoint the refugee is asked
are you human?
The refugee is sure it’s still human
but worries that overnight,
while it slept, there may have been
a change in classification.”

from Loneliness is Killing Me
- “tonight no one knows you”
- “Cidlada ka atkow, Abti—be
stronger than your loneliness"

- “He sings along. Alone this time,
alone every time.”

from Home*
- “You only leave home when home
won’t let you stay”
- “No one would leave home unless
home chased you.”
- “The insults are easier to swallow than finding
your child’s body in the rubble.”
- “Home is the barrel of a gun. No one
would leave home unless home chased you to
the shore. No one would leave home until
home is a voice in your ear saying—leave,
run, now. I don’t know what I’ve become.”

- “I don’t know where I am going. Where I came
from is disappearing. I am unwelcome. My
beauty is not beauty here.”

from Bless Maymunn’s Mind
- “She imagines she will die here, alone, far
from home.”
- “how proud they are, how all their hopes
depend on her, how walahi, all their dreams
lie at her feet.”

from Drowning in Dawson’s Creek
- “I was willing to disown myself.”

from Bless the Qumayo
- “verily your life is brimming
with sorrow, we’ve witnessed
love slowly abandon you, still,
we pray you find healing, bitch.”

from Bless Your Ugly Daughter
- “As an infant forced to gargle rosewater,
smoked in uunsi to purify her of
whatever
unclean thing she inherited.”
- “she has a refugee camp tucked
behind each ear, her body is a body
littered
with ugly things”

from Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle
-“Dear Uncle, is everything you love
foreign
or are you foreign to everything you
love?”

from Photographs of Hooyo
(Harlesden, 1990-2000)
-“names of the dead thrown behind her
like salt”

from Hooyo Full of Grace
- “Your girlhood an incubation for
madness.”

from Hooyo*e
- “I don’t recognise my own children
they speak and dream in the wrong
language
as much as I understand
it may as well be the language of
birds”


from Backwards
- “I can make us loved, just say the word.”
- “Maybe we’re okay, kid?”
- “I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time
there’ll so much love,
you won’t be able to see beyond it.”


from Hooyoo Isn’t Home
After Idra Novey
- “When the body remembers, it bucks
widely,”
- “While you wash your body you realise it
is not your body.
And at the same time, it is the only body
you have.”

from The Abubakr Girls Are Different*
- “Daughter is synonymous with traitor”


from Bless Hooyoo’s Kohl Rimmed Eyes
- “Allah guiding her
hand
steady as the dead.”



from Bless the Sharmuto
- “our mother has banned her from saying
God’s name.”

from Buraanbur
- “The women
form a tighter circle around her flailing body,
clapping until something comes loose, comes
undone, until something makes itself known.”
- “The women chant ii kacay, dhiigaa ii kacay,
it’s rising, the blood is rising.
Bless the
catheter sting of womanhood.”

from To Swim with God*
-“Inna lillahi Wa inna ilayhi Rajioon

Hooyo says no one can fight it—
the body returning to God,
if it must, your body will leave without
you.”

translation: Inna lillahi Wa inna ilayhi Rajioon - To God we belong, to God we return.


from Bless Grace Jones
- “from you, we are learning
to put ourselves first.”


* the poems with asterisks are my favourite ones

*the poems with asterisks are my favourite ones -
(would put the entire poem in this review if it wasn’t theft just to show everyone the beauty and importance of the entire thing.)
other favourites (that were not quoted above):
- Filial Cannibalism
- Bless the Camels
- Unbearable Weight of Staying
- My Father, the Astronaut
- Bless the Real Housewife
- The Abubakr Girls Are Different
- Bless This House
- Earth to Yosra
- Victoria in Illiyin
- Bless the Gun Tossed into a River - After ‘Freedom of Love’ by Andre Breton


Would I recommend this book??
Yes, I would recommend this beautiful poetry book.

Will I re-read this book?
Will I re-read this book? 
I would re-read this, yes.
I read this from my electronic library, but I would love a physical copy of my own.

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la_karina1818's review against another edition

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emotional reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

5.0


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