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4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
There were some moments where the author really hit their stride, but a lot of times it felt like they were trying too hard to be deep and the meaning was lost in the process.
"I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark. 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."
challenging
dark
emotional
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
what a gifted poet Warsan Shire is. I've seen her works I think mostly on twitter (in the better days) or screenshotted on FB, and of course featured in Lemonade.
she's so gifted with words.
she's so gifted with words.
medium-paced
emotional
inspiring
fast-paced
no one talk to me right now
The title is like a precis of this blisteringly vivid collection: Shire locates her poetry in the generational spaces of women, especially her mother, referred to using the Somali word "Hooyo." That lack of translation reminds the reader of the poet's displacement and the radical bridge these poems erect between worlds. "The House" opens, "Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women," and these poems offer keys and, when real opening is not possible, windows. Shire's similarly titled poem "Home," unfortunately too relevant for this moment, contains the much quoted line, “No one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark." Themes of violence -- sexual, anti-immigrant, and directly through war -- mark these women and children but do not define them. By locating herself among the marginalized and abused and calling the liminal moment her "home" or "house," Shire offers the possibility of self definition for those whose circumstances would otherwise characterize them.
This is a harrowing collection, and my reservations are based in my own faint-heartedness. There is nowhere to breathe in this collection, and anyone looking for the title's blessing will find it purely aspirational.
I was provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review by Net Galley.
This is a harrowing collection, and my reservations are based in my own faint-heartedness. There is nowhere to breathe in this collection, and anyone looking for the title's blessing will find it purely aspirational.
I was provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review by Net Galley.
dark
fast-paced