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Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
There is something to be admired about stripping back poetry to its raw core, using imagery crafted with purposeful metaphors, not meant to distract from the lack of depth or need to shock. The content...The rawness...The realness stands on its own merit woven like a tapestry of life, each pulled thread, small imperfection, discoloration, and hole part of each thread stitched together to create something bigger.
There were so many stand out moments from this collection but reading the realizations and the truths ticked off like they refer to an object instead of a person made my heart ache. “I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing.” ― Warsan Shire
Beautifully written, this poetry is not for those who want things like Frost telling us "two roads diverge in a yellow wood." Instead this is a montage of life's moments that are meant to make us feel uncomfortable, to make us ask questions, and to make us understand the dangers of apathy. “Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck.” ― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
