What your mother told you after your father left -- Your mother's first kiss -- Things we had lost in the summer -- Maymuun's mouth -- Grandfather's hands -- Bone -- Snow -- Birds -- Beauty -- The kitchen -- Fire -- When we last saw your father -- You were conceived -- Trying to swim with God -- Questions for Miriam -- Conversations about home -- Old Spice -- My foreign wife is dying and does not want to be touched -- Ugly -- Tea with our grandmothers -- In love and in war

Warshan Shire is a young Kenyan-born Somali poet and this book is her debut published in 2011. Her poetry is beautiful, full of sourness, hurt but also of love. Many of the poems gives voice to the plight of Muslim women of different generations and to refugees/migrants forced to flee for different reasons.

Shire was born in Kenya in 1988 to Somali parents who migrated to the UK and settled in London the following year after fleeing from the civil war in Somalia. Her upbringing and schooling took place in Britain. Home itself becomes the speaking voice in st. 8, telling its people to “ leave, run away from me now” because it is no longer the place they grew up in, the land they belong to. The conclusion is a bitter one: “I dont know what I've become but i know that anywhere is safer than here”. If my mother contracted and died of the virus, I would not be able to forgive both myself and her for not working through our relationship”, I thought. My psychologist tried to counsel me into not jumbling funeral scenarios before they happen but it all fell on stone. Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex. / Our mother has banned her from saying God’s name. urn:lcp:teachingmymother0000shir:epub:1fc95e84-d426-4d7c-8739-827a05a04a8e Foldoutcount 0 Identifier teachingmymother0000shir Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s21d8ssmzjd Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781905233298

This poetry collection is perfect for those that have experienced these events, but it raises enough questions for those that have not and simply wish to know what others have had the misfortune to experience. For those worried they will feel like aliens when reading about events unknown to them, this will not do such a thing, it will instead draw the reader in, verse by verse. Sex and relationships are often the centre of her poems. The women are desperate, they yearn for love, affection, pleasure. Instead they mainly receive violence, terror and rejection. But Warsan also talks about the trauma that war and having to flee one's home country brought upon the inflicted. What it means to be a refugee, the fear of deportation, the sense of not belonging, the despair of never being able to return. Book Genre: 21st Century, Adult, Africa, Contemporary, Cultural, Eastern Africa, Feminism, Literature, Nonfiction, Poetry, Race, Somalia, Womens This collection is actually pretty good. I can see what Warsan Shire is saying...but she isn't saying it to me. I really felt a few of the poems but most washed over me. All of these issues are woven into this very slim book of poetry. And somehow, Warsan makes it work. The collection doesn't feel overburdened by its themes. Rather, it feels urgent and crucial. Like I said before, some of the poems were extremely hard to read and elicited very visceral emotions from me. I had to shut my eyes, I felt like vomiting. It made me angry at all of the injustices and horrors that the women in Warsan's life had to face.Shire speaks in here not only of girls that lost their virginity and lied about it, or that were forced into female genital mutilation, but that were raped and violated, and deemed unworthy just the same. These are their tales, and they all have value, and there is always something to learn, something to understand. Warsan Shire is one of the poets I was hoping to get to during National Poetry Month and I received two collections through interlibrary loan.

Today is a good day. Today is a wonderful day - any day that starts out like this is. I found a house full of words. Bold, fearless, silky, abrasive, wounding words. Warsan Shire is a house full of words. Words that don't cuddle you, words that envelope you. There's a deep sense of melancholy to her words and quite a lot of her poems contain explicit content - which I have absolutely no qualms about. If you don't do bold and abrasive, then this probably isn't for you. But personally, I love the way the words burn, sometimes sweet and silky is just too much of that - sweet and silky. I think that's the beauty of poetry, the creeping subtlety of it's power is you never know which line will sink or float you, make or mar you. You never know which line you'll latch unto and cling to for dear life. I've always thought that poetry emphasizes the delicacy of words and maximizes it's full utility. Where books might be pretentious, extravagant or redundant with fine literary sounding words, I've always thought, in a way, poetry thrives on it. But that's not to say it needs it, simply there's love to be found even in those that prove tedious. Maybe I feel this way because I knew poetry before I knew stories and novels. Some poems in this are more of 3's than 4's but on average, I rated this a 4 because it was a really good collection. This book is amazing. Warsan Shires work is amazing, and some of her poems in this book made me tear up and wonder at how we all have ths same words, but only a special group of people can craft and place them so beautifully that the truth and emotions of them make you ache. One of my favorite poems in this collection is called "Beauty". In it, Warsan describes how her older sisters "soaps between her legs" and "stole / the neighbour's husband, burnt his name into her skin." She recounts her sister's "shameful" behaviour, since her sister loves sex and finding pleasure where it offers itself to her. I like the poem because it feels so real. I can imagine Warsan's relationship to her sister. I see the two of them in their flat when reading this poem. I know how Warsan must've felt as a younger sister. Excited, confused, envious, judgmental. It's 4 a.m. and she winks at me, bending over the sink,My favourite poems are Things We Lost in the Summer, Birds, Ugly and Old Spice, but the greatest impact have the short pieces of prose labelled Conversations about Home (at the Deportation Center). Each piece reads like a protest, an outcry, like a way to give the thousands of immigrants and refugees a voice to tell their story. In our current political climate many people see refugees as a (terrorism) threat and refuse to give them a chance, but Shire's words cut so deep that you can’t turn a deaf ear to them. What we never see, however, is how it makes some people’s minds fidget and hearts sink, including my own. For me, Mother’s Day is revisiting the five stages of emotional distress, yearning yet mourning the perfect mother-daughter relationship that never was. Like all great poetry, multiple readings come out of Shire’s words. I like to think of the fire as a metaphorical flame of individuality. When the invaders come, set your hearts ablaze and remember who you are; remember your culture; remember your language: remember you. When the men come do no lose this sense of you to the superimposing of another’s beliefs. Become angry, fight against it, rage at the injustice and learn how to beat it. But at the very root of it all, never ever forget. In such an idea Shire establishes the authority of the individual’s voice. Through Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth the empowerment of women becomes like a burning tempest kindled up by the rawness of Warsan Shire’s words. The poems are also about reality, the horrors that some people have to face in a word driven by war. They carry with them such human depth, none more so than the poem In Love and In War. For the past 70 years, people have been fleeing faster than ever, from the Holocaust, from the civil wars in parts of Europe, from revolutions in the Middle East and Africa, from war-torn lands, from totalitarian governments in Asia and Latin America; all with one purpose, survival for them and their families. And every step of the way they have encountered some form of oppression or mistrust. They are called rapists, murderers, inferior, savages; and the hate spreads like plague thanks to news networks and politicians. People forget these are humans that only want to feel safe, to have food for their family, to get educated and do better. People forget that down the line, someone in their family might have been in the same road, or will be in the future.

PDF / EPUB File Name: Teaching_My_Mother_How_to_Give_Birth_-_Warsan_Shire.pdf, Teaching_My_Mother_How_to_Give_Birth_-_Warsan_Shire.epub In the first poem of the collection, "Your Mother’s First Kiss", Warsan details her mother's first relationship to a boy of whom she later learns that he "raped women / when the war broke out." The poem is haunting because with each verse, it becomes clearer that his boy also raped her mother when she was 16. It ends with the chilling verse: Last week, she saw him driving the number 18 bus, Mother’s Day is often depicted as a joyous celebration; images of doting daughters and caring mothers wearing matching silk pyjamas and drinking coffee in bed often visualise the event. Shire does not compromise. The idea of setting oneself on fire is tangible to suicide. The men are coming, the soldiers and sons of war, so let us end it before they can touch us. This can be read as an act by a woman burning herself to avoid the objectifying effects that are coming her way. Historically speaking, the women of an invaded country often become the greatest victims. We all know what humans can do when in a blood frenzy. By committing suicide these daughters can avoid the worse of such possible crimes. But the act of setting oneself on fire can be read in a different way, a much brighter way. The last stanza made my heart hurt. I know war and I know violence, but rejection - that's something I can't pretend to understand.I had sleepless nights because hoping she does not die before I would never be able to buy her a first car, fill her cupboards with Tupperware and Table Charm, or have a spa date while wearing pink pyjama sets. in his bedroom?Again, Warsan just finds the perfect words to make this scene come to life. She tells the woman: "Your daughter's face is a small riot, / her hands are a civil war, / a refugee camp behind each ear, / a body littered with ugly things." Her history and the history of her people can be traced on the daughter's skin. The poem ends with the beautiful sentiment: "But God, / doesn't she wear / the world well?" In 2010 she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and one year later she released Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth, a poetry pamphlet. For her publication she chose flipped eye publishing, which publishes original poetry and prose on a not-for-profit model. This approach has allowed flipped eye to focus on developing new writers with potential, thus facilitating the emergence of truly unique literary talent. Sad people have the gift of time, while the world dizzies everyone else; they remain stagnant, their bodies refusing to follow pace with the universe. With these kind of people everything aches for too long, everything moves without rush, wounds are always wet.”