This is just such a bold and brilliant collection, that explores so much and the writing flows really well too. Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Roisin and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

In this truly stunning guided journal, Róisín addresses ableism, thin privilege, fatphobia, white privilege, and more, using empowering quotes and prompts to encourage you to appreciate the changes your body has gone through, explore beauty standards and ideals, reinforce self-confidence, and, ultimately, become the best version of yourself. I’m being a bit demeaning in the first sentence since many poems are not like that, and she talks a lot about her complicated identity and relationship with colonialism. If you’re like me, and often quick to dismiss poetry as a result of terrible required reading at school, please be reassured that there is some fucking awesome modern poetry available.

My favorites were “Golden Lube,” “Mansplain Nation,” “Rumi,” “This One’s with Teeth,” “What 9/11 Did to Us,” and “Belonging. Over the summer, I saw a few Bookstagram accounts raving about early review copies of Fariha Róisín’s How to Cure a Ghost. The author speaks about her own experiences, and I feel I have no right to say if they deserve a three, four, five, star rating. And 400,000 women were raped ( they were not known and never will be known … r emember us, like you’d remember white death). Being In Your Body (Abrams, 2019) is a journal for women, femmes and non-binary folks to work through body dysmorphia.

It also examines the intersection of queerness and being a femme of color while navigating a white world. It's about the abuse enacted by mothers, while considering the history of that abuse; it's about the psychological torture of being talked about but never heard, of not knowing the sound of our own voices because of how long it's been drowned out by others, it's about a deep empathy and respect for abusive parents who have survived so much that you'll never have to go through.

Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. How to Cure a Ghost is a reminder that our bodies contain histories, and that every time an incident of flippant, casual racism/misogyny/queerphobia happens, it's an accumulation of war and abuse, rape and violence, that have been normalized intergenerationally. The illustrations also add a nice touch and bring depth to certain themes discussed in the poetry collection. Roisin's] writing is intensely vulnerable and through revealing her own experience she reflects so many others.

mothers’ is particularly powerful ( when i look in the mirror, sometimes i see them, looking back, eyes droopy, weary from the weight of womanhood, tired of the throes of masculinity, patriarchy, white supremacy, they mourn it too. Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Róisín and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities. I’m a feminist, but I’m a white feminist, and I’m very aware of the privilege which comes with that. I can only hope the author was able to forgive those who wronged her and heal her generational trauma.

There were some stanzas and lines that were just not very good and read more like a tumblr rant than a thought-out piece of work. I found her writing to be raw, but also soft enough to gently draw out the words into a series of beautiful poems.