“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark’s mouth.” With these words, among other things, the young Somali British poet Warsan Shire struck a chord in 2015 amid the European refugee crisis. Her poem ‘Home’ was shared worldwide as a call for a more humane policy and instantly made Shire famous.
Shire writes about her own experiences as a migrant, about losing her home and not feeling at home anywhere, about war, sex and being a woman. Bless the Daughter is about a girl who grew up despite the lack of someone to care for her. Drawing on her own life and that of her loved ones, pop culture and headlines, Shire brings to life the lives of refugees and migrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls in these beautiful poems.
These are noisy lives, full of music and weeping and surahs. These are fragrant lives, full of blood and perfume and jasmine. These are polychrome lives, full of moonlight and turmeric and kohl.
Bless the Daughter is an enchanting celebration of resilience and survival instinct. A long-awaited debut collection that will be published in translation by none other than Radna Fabias and that will leave no reader unmoved.
- Warsan Shire
- In Dutch
- Paperback
- 93 pages
- First Edition
- Publisher Das Mag
- ISBN: 9789493248182
