Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire

Send as gift Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

by Warsan Shire

Narrator Warsan Shire

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more

Length 30 minutes

Language English

Send as gift Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

What elevates teaching my mother how to give birth, what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times - as in Tayeb Salih's work - and translating to the realm of lyric the work of the likes of Nawal El Saadawi. As Rumi said, "Love will find its way through all languages on its own"; in teaching my mother how to give birth, Warsan's début pamphlet, we witness the unearthing of a poet who finds her way through all preconceptions to strike the heart directly.

Poetry

Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer who is based in London. Born in 1988, she is an artist and activist who uses her work to document narratives of journey and trauma. Warsan has read her work internationally, including recent readings in South Africa, Italy and Germany, and her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.