WEARING MY MOTHER'S HEART

A poet’s ode to the women in her family.

Thakur, a British performance poet of Gambian and Asian descent, writes that her “mouth mostly speaks from the abundance of” her mother’s and grandmothers’ love. Having lived “vastly different” lives from the author’s, they haven’t always agreed, but “their hearts have always been more powerful than any rule or rationale,” and she emphasizes the importance of understanding them. These sentiments from Thakur’s introduction establish the vein in which the poetry that follows traverses generations, traveling through geographies of land, mind, and body. A sense of being rooted, as well of searching, clearly comes through in this collection, as the author weaves together themes of love, belonging, race, and identity. In “It Was a Different Time,” Thakur writes, “In a culture of scales / that tip to tradition, / my sisters and I grate our fingertips away in the kitchen, / callous to our kaleidoscope dreams, / blink into the eyes of society, / stand behind the mirror / and hold our hips. // We read them in Braille… // ‘You are function before you are female.’” The evocative and poignant poetry explores the power a mother holds; art, censorship, and exploitation; and God, romance, love, and more. Memory, family, hope, and grief hold the poems together while they strongly excavate sociopolitical themes. Reading them is unsettling—and powerfully beautiful.

A masterful, immersive read.