{"product_id":"besaydoo-yalie-saweda-kamara-9781639550319","title":"Besaydoo: Poems","description":"\u003cb\u003eSelected by Amaud Jamaul Johnson for the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Yalie Saweda Kamara's \u003ci\u003eBesaydoo\u003c\/i\u003e is an elegantly wrought love song to home--as place, as people, as body, and as language.\u003c\/b\u003eA griot is a historian, a living repository of communal legacies with \"a story pulsing in every blood cell.\" In \u003ci\u003eBesaydoo\u003c\/i\u003e, Kamara serves as griot for the Freeborn in Oakland, the Sierra Leonean in California, the girl straddling womanhood, the woman re-discovering herself. \"I am made from the obsession of detail,\" she writes, setting scenes from her own multifaceted legacy in sharp relief: the memory of her mother's singing, savory stacks of lumpia, a church where \"everyone is broken, but trying.\" A multitudinous witness.\u003cbr\u003e Kamara psalms from the nexus of many languages--Krio, English, French, poetry's many dialects--to highlight mechanisms not just for survival, but for abundance. \"I make myth for peace,\" she writes, as well as for loss, for delight, for kinship, and most of all for a country where Black means \"steadfast and opulent,\" and \"dangerous and infinite.\" She writes for a new America, where praise is plentiful and Black lives flourish.But in \u003ci\u003eBesaydoo\u003c\/i\u003e, there is no partition between the living and the dead. There is no past nor present. There is, instead, a joyful simultaneity--a liberating togetherness sustained by song.\u003cb\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eBesaydoo\u003c\/i\u003e audiobook read by Yalie Saweda Kamara is available everywhere you listen to audiobooks.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Yalie Saweda Kamara\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1639550313\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781639550319\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Milkweed Editions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/09\/2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 96\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.60lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.80h x 7.70w x 0.50d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eForeword\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/27\/2023","brand":"Yalie Saweda Kamara","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44121436881151,"sku":"9781639550319","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_ef9a9ea7-b0eb-4123-8c2a-9abafeaf8ab9.jpg?v=1687419809","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/besaydoo-yalie-saweda-kamara-9781639550319","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}