Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

Poems

By: Warsan Shire

Narrated by: Warsan Shire

Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire

“The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist

“Warsan Shire is our ultimate modern poet. . . . This is our James Baldwin.”—The New York Times Culture Desk

LONGLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly

Mama, I made it / out of your home / alive, raised by / the voices / in my head.

With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls. In Shire’s hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life, full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life, full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life, full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.

Beautifully done

Warsan shires voice is so… beautifully apt. Her words are delivered in such a way that i was transported. I was the subject and the writer. Loved every piece of this work. Thank you warsan shire for sharing this with the world.

Oh my

How beautiful. How tragic. How wonderful the ups and downs of life. The things we go through

The poems

The poems really stood out. I enjoyed reading the poems even when some of them were very sad.