Our Men Do Not Belong to Us

Warsan Shire
Our Men Do Not Belong to Us

Our Men Do Not Belong to Us is the opening noise of a poet who has already

gained a significant amount of praise for her poetry. Warsan Shire’s poems

are direct, but they are works of such delicate construction and layered

insight that one quickly realizes what seems “direct” is necessarily wholly

indirect, questioning, uncertain, and vulnerable. Her poems are about how

women deal with the violence of all kinds of exploitation, but they are

never didactic or simplistic. Shire fills her poems with the effects of her

complex sense of identity in transcultural Africa.

—Kwame Dawes