#teaching my mother how to give birth
“She knows loss intimately, carries whole cities in her belly.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Ugly”, published c. 2011.
“My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Conversation About Home”, published c. 2011.
“I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes; on my face they are still together.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth”, published c. 2011.
“Last night in bed I swear I thought my body was on fire.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: The Kitchen”, published c. 2011.
“Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Conversations About Home.”, published c. 2011.
“…how the memory hardens into a tumour.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: My Foreign Wife is Dying and Does Not Want To Be Touched”, published c. 2011.
“When I meet others like me I recognise the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Conversation About Home (At The Deportation Center)”, published c. 2011.
“I want to make love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Conversation About Home (At The Deportation Center)”, published c. 2011.
“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. But God, doesn’t she wear the world well?”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Ugly”, published c. 2011.
“My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Conversation About Home (At The Deportation Center)”, published c. 2011.
“I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I’m bloated with language I can’t afford to forget.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: Conversation About Home (At The Deportation Center)”, published c. 2011.
“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, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: My Foreign Wife is Dying and Does Not Want To Be Touched”, published c. 2011.
“To my daughter I will say,
‘when the men come, set yourself on fire’.”
— Warsan Shire, from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth: In Love And In War”, published c. 2011.
