#warsan shire

“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.