half_book_and_co's review against another edition
5.0
Mahtem Shiferraw's poetry is equally specific in its cultural and linguistic references as it is universal in its emotional appeal. In one series of poems within the collection, “Conversations with Self”, the speaker confesses she does not know “how to be sad/ without hopelessness// how to hope/ without despair”. And Your Body is War lets you feel this sadness and despair – but it goes beyond it for as Shifferaw writes in “The Yellow Woman”: “I am yellow/ I have yellow in me// and it does not/ let me die”, the horrors might be huge, but something and someone survives, something new can grow out of that.
Full review on my blog: https://www.haveyouread.de/all-the-ghosts-of-life-assemble-before-us/
Full review on my blog: https://www.haveyouread.de/all-the-ghosts-of-life-assemble-before-us/
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