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As ethnic hatred spills out across the border, the Bagogwe, who belong to the targeted Tutsi minority, are transformed into strangers in their own land.ĭogon is 3 when he sees his uncle beheaded by a militiaman. Dogon’s family, members of eastern Congo’s Bagogwe community, has become collateral in neighboring Rwanda’s ongoing genocide.

There’s a certain irony to the complaint, for those who have felt misgivings about the country of Dogon’s birth will finish this book with many of their prejudices confirmed.ĭogon’s story begins in 1995, when his family hits the road running, warned that local villagers - neighbors they laughed, chatted and drank with - are headed their way, bent on slaughter. Each reader will come away changed.THOSE WE THROW AWAY ARE DIAMONDS A Refugee’s Search for Home By Mondiant Dogon with Jenna KrajeskiĪt one point in Mondiant Dogon’s poignant memoir, “Those We Throw Away Are Diamonds,” the author takes issue with the negative associations that cling, cobweb-like, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which he remembers as “the most alive place in the world,” a fertile Garden of Eden. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival.

This is polychrome life, full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. This is fragrant life, full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is noisy life, full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls. With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Mama, I made it / out of your home / alive, raised by / the voices / in my head. "Shire is the real thing-fresh, cutting, indisputably alive."-Dwight Garner, The New York Times "The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts."-Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire