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4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Bless the daughter - raised by a voice in her head
Where should I start.
This poetry collection may be the most beautiful work I ever read and that profoundly moved me to the core. Warsan Shire puts into words his family history, facing immigration, uprooting, distance, womanhood, cultural gap, difficulty of integration, family. I really have no more words to add. I warmly encourage you to read this beautiful and sensitive collection.
My favorite poems are:
• Home
• My father, the astronaut
• Joyride
I am just going to give you a little insight by quoting one of the many passages I affectionate.
Extract from the poem - Home.
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.
Extract from the poem - Bless your ugly daughter.
Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
she has a refugee camp tucked
behind each ear, her body is a body littered
with ugly things
but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well.
Where should I start.
This poetry collection may be the most beautiful work I ever read and that profoundly moved me to the core. Warsan Shire puts into words his family history, facing immigration, uprooting, distance, womanhood, cultural gap, difficulty of integration, family. I really have no more words to add. I warmly encourage you to read this beautiful and sensitive collection.
My favorite poems are:
• Home
• My father, the astronaut
• Joyride
I am just going to give you a little insight by quoting one of the many passages I affectionate.
Extract from the poem - Home.
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.
Extract from the poem - Bless your ugly daughter.
Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
she has a refugee camp tucked
behind each ear, her body is a body littered
with ugly things
but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well.
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
amazing amazing amazing i love her work so much it has the perfect balance of abstract and relatabilty and every poem feels so personal and hyperspecific to her experince but at the same somewhat familiar. the way she moves from colloquialisms to religious imagery to detailed descriptions is so perfect, you can tell every word is chosen with great care. my favourite works were probably "bless the house" and "filial cannibalism"
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
This was an astonishingly beautiful collection! The audiobook was also stellar! I tend to adore audiobooks that the author reads, especially in poetry. Even out of all the author-read audiobooks I know though, this one was a shining star. Warsan's mostly British accent is a wonderful accompaniment to these poems, but the way she imparts emotions into her reading is the most breathtaking part of the audio. The emotional nature of Warsan's narration is not overdone, it simply reads as genuine, honest, and at times vulnerable. Warsan is a skilled and confident poet, her narration only reinforces these themes in her poetry.
I also loved that the audiobook not only included the dedication and credits but also the book's glossary. While the glossary is a bit harder to reference in audio form (especially because the time of the table of contents hyperlinks are off the pace) it still benefitted me to hear Warsan's explanations for some of the words and events I was initially unfamiliar with. Most poetry collections don't even include glossaries, so the fact the audiobook does as well was a treat!
The poems that especially stood out to me in narrated form were the poem "Home" about the early refugee experience of fleeing and "Backwards" which was striking in audio because of the echoing nature of the poem.
I also loved that the audiobook not only included the dedication and credits but also the book's glossary. While the glossary is a bit harder to reference in audio form (especially because the time of the table of contents hyperlinks are off the pace) it still benefitted me to hear Warsan's explanations for some of the words and events I was initially unfamiliar with. Most poetry collections don't even include glossaries, so the fact the audiobook does as well was a treat!
The poems that especially stood out to me in narrated form were the poem "Home" about the early refugee experience of fleeing and "Backwards" which was striking in audio because of the echoing nature of the poem.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
I would read other reviews because I didn’t fully understand or follow some of the poems so I will reread another time at a better head space.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Miscarriage, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Death of parent, War
emotional
reflective
fast-paced