Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

Praise

“To say Warsan Shire’s first full-length poetry collection is ‘highly anticipated’ is an understatement. . . . Consider Bless the Daughter essential reading.”—The Week

“The British-Somali poet is charting a new course with her first full-length poetry collection . . . which weaves together the themes of migration, womanhood, Black identity, and intergenerational collection that Shire is so singularly gifted at exploring.”—Vogue

“This is a collection that merits slow and careful reading.”—BuzzFeed

“In her first full-length collection of poetry, the Somali-British writer forges her own path, with meditations on migration, femininity, trauma and resilience.”—Esquire

“Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head tackles many of the same themes as her previous work, with the same striking verse we’ve come to expect from her.”—Bustle

“Warsan Shire is our ultimate modern poet. . . . Her poetry [is] fierce and urgent . . . moody and moving . . . direct and honest. . . . This is our James Baldwin.”—The Culture Desk podcast from The New York Times

“Shire’s strikingly beautiful imagery leverages the specificity of her own womanhood, love life, tussles with mental health, grief, family history, and stories from the Somali diaspora, to make them reverberate universally.”—The Telegraph

“This full-length collection . . . depicts a journey to womanhood intermixed with pop culture and news references.”—Literary Hub

“The commanding debut from Shire captures the loneliness of migration in crystalline language punctuated by the menace of patriarchal violence.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“It is not overstatement to say Shire writes the way Nina Simone sang.”—Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Beauty is maddeningly elusive, but it does exist. It’s here in these lines, bursting brilliant, reshaping the story.”—Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art

“Warsan Shire’s exquisite, memorable, and finely tuned poems articulate a depth of experience that never fails to surprise and profoundly move me, as she so powerfully gives voice to the unspoken.”—Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other

“Heartbreaking, full-bodied, and luscious . . . If someone from another planet wanted to know what it was like for a woman to survive on earth, they should read this book!”—Pascale Petit, author of Tiger Girl

“This fierce and compelling book of poems should come with a warning label: These poems will break your heart.”—Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies and Afterlife

“Warsan Shire is an expert sculptor. She molds words into clay, her poems into statues—each one a wonder that I return to, in reverence.”—Vivek Shraya, author of I’m Afraid of Men and even this page is white