Ladan Osman Reviewed at Rain Taxi

Sillerman Prize winner Ladan Osman’s The Kitchen-Dweller’sTestimony received a positive and insightful review in the Fall online issue of Rain Taxi. Wesley Rothman praises the collection as “wildly imaginative” and recognizes that the poems “carry us into spaces we rarely access in daily life” in order to effectively examine the claustrophobic realities of race.

“This collection commands honesty at all costs, on the parts of speakers and readers. In “Her House Is the Middle East,” we learn of a wife so used to her husband’s infidelity, the house is a place used to both conflict and inaction. Osman brings our attention to the reality of being conditioned to violence, to abuse, to decorum, to corruption, to suffering. Once we have been conditioned, how do we recognize injustice, how do we testify that it thrives, and how do we overthrow the force that has conditioned us?”

The full review can be read here, and don’t forget that submissions to the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets are free and open until December 1st.