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Breaking the Silence is the first comprehensive collection of
literature from Liberia since before the nation’s independence.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley has gathered work from the 1800s to the
present, including poets and emerging young writers exploring
contemporary literary traditions with African and African diaspora
poetry that transcends borders. In this collection, Liberia’s
founding settlers wrestle with their identity as African free
slaves in the homeland from which their ancestors were captured,
and writers of the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries find
themselves navigating a landscape at odds with itself. From poets
of Liberia’s past to young writers of the present, the
contributors to this volume celebrate the beauty of their nation
while mourning the devastation of a long, bloody civil war.
Described by African scholar and literary critic Chielozona Eze as
"one of the most prolific African poets of the twenty-first
century," Patricia Jabbeh Wesley composed When the Wanderers Come
Home during a four-month visit to her homeland of Liberia in 2013.
She gives powerful voice to the pain and inner turmoil of a
homeland still reconciling itself in the aftermath of multiple wars
and destruction. Wesley, a native Liberian, calls on deeply rooted
African motifs and proverbs, utilizing the poetics of both the West
and Africa to convey her grief. Autobiographical in nature, the
poems highlight the hardships of a diaspora African and the
devastation of a country and continent struggling to recover. When
the Wanderers Come Home is a woman's story about being an exile, a
survivor, and an outsider in her own country; it is her cry for the
Africa that is being lost in wars across the continent, creating
more wanderers and world citizens.
Praise Song for My Children celebrates twenty-one years of poetry
by one of the most significant African poets of this century.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley guides us through the complex and
intertwined highs and lows of motherhood and all the roles that it
encompasses: parent, woman, wife, sister, friend. Her work is
deeply personal, drawing from her own life and surroundings to
convey grief, the bleakness of war, humor, deep devotion, and the
hope of possibility. These poems lend an international voice to the
tales of motherhood, as Wesley speaks both to the African and to
the Western experience of motherhood, particularly black
motherhood. She pulls from African motifs and proverbs, utilizing
the poetics of both the West and Africa to enrich her striking
emotional range. Leading us to the depths of mourning and the
heights of tender love, she responds to American police brutality,
writing "To be a black woman is to be a woman, / ready to mourn,"
and remembers a dear friend who is at once "mother and wife and
friend and pillar / and warrior woman all in one." Wesley writes
poetry that moves with her through life, land, and love, seeing
with eyes that have witnessed both national and personal tragedy
and redemption. Born in Tugbakeh, Liberia and raised in Monrovia,
Wesley immigrated to the United States in 1991 to escape the
Liberian civil war. In this moving collection, she invites us to
join her as she buries loved ones, explores long-distance
connections through social media, and sings bittersweet praises of
the women around her, of mothers, and of Africa.
In Wesley's fourth poetry collection, she continues her lyric
exploration of what it means to be a survivor and an immigrant,
retelling stories of a generation ruined by war and grief, and the
healing that follows.
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