danadalloway 's review for:

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire

4.0

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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.