In Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's third collection of poems, the poet writes about being caught between two cultures: her native Liberia and her adopted America. The struggles of the immigrant are contrasted with her memories of the Liberian Civil War.
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...Wesley writes with clear-eyed lyricism about her ruthless and beleaguered homeland, and the bittersweet relief and loss of the diaspora. Her poems are scintillating and vivid, quickly sketched fables shaped by recollections of childhood playmates, moonlight and ocean surf, hibiscus hedges, and big pots of boiling soup. But these paeans to home blend with percussive visions of falling rockets and murdered children, sharp recollections of hunger and mourning, and a survivor's careful gratitude in a land of cold winds and rationed sunlight, her carefully measured memories and cherished dreams of return. --Booklist
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's The River is Rising is both brilliant and heartbreaking. Survivor of the brutal Liberian Civil War, Wesley bears witness to a life she lost to that war, and to what it means to be a refugee who has remade herself.... "To every war," she says simply, "There are no winners." .... I am in awe of these beautiful, necessary poems, and the glory and largesse of Wesley s vision. --Cynthia Hogue
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's poetry is heartfelt, wise, and alive... One senses in her that rare combination of someone who has been deeply schooled in both literature and life, and who has integrated those two into a deeply felt and shrewd worldview. --Stuart Dybek
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's The River is Rising is both brilliant and heartbreaking. Survivor of the brutal Liberian Civil War, Wesley bears witness to a life she lost to that war, and to what it means to be a refugee who has remade herself.... "To every war," she says simply, "There are no winners." .... I am in awe of these beautiful, necessary poems, and the glory and largesse of Wesley s vision. --Cynthia Hogue
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's poetry is heartfelt, wise, and alive... One senses in her that rare combination of someone who has been deeply schooled in both literature and life, and who has integrated those two into a deeply felt and shrewd worldview. --Stuart Dybek
About the Author
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a survivor of the Liberian Civil War that ravaged the country from 1989-2003. She is the author of three books of poetry, Where the Road Turns,Becoming Ebony and Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa. Her work has appeared in numerous American and international publications. Currently at work on her memoir of the Liberian Civil War, Patricia teaches English, Creative Writing, and African Literature at Penn State University, Altoona. She lives in the Pennsylvania with her family.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love this book of poetry!,
This review is from: The River Is Rising (Perfect Paperback)
I love this book of poetry. Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is one who is truly African and American, unlike many who have been assigned the name in reparation for a history ancestors experienced. I feel that I can say this, since I am African-American, or, as Du Bois puts it, "I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil" (The Souls of Black Folk, from "The Forethought"). Dr. Wesley's poetry speaks of a different veil, the veil of assumptions. Many assume what Africa is like, but Dr. Wesley has actually experienced first-hand a taste of Africa, and she shares her poetic meals with her family of readers, meals served with American appetizers and desserts. Her poetry is able to reflect the true realities of a portion of Africa as well as some of the realities of a portion of America. She voices her 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' very poetically. She writes of Pittsburgh and Michigan as well as of Liberia, and her experiences tempt this reader. Dr. Wesley offers in this book of poetry tidbits of death, of birth, and of life, all with that special second sight that she has.
I agree with the blurb on the back of the book: "One senses in her that rare combination of someone who has been deeply schooled in both literature and life, and who has integrated those two into a deeply felt and shrewd worldview." For example, in the moving poem, "Memories," Dr. Wesley relays the experience of another "foreigner" arriving in America: "She's talking of years ago when she, / arriving in America, like me, one bundle of clothing,/ her breath of air and hoping like me, just for one more day." The persona goes on to say, poignantly, "and then I come to stand here and laugh here, / and cry here about my own war, clinging to my own past and a war still being fought at home." Dr. Wesley's poetry draws from that controversial term, universal, that term Stephen Henderson calls a "cop out." Sometimes in life, however, we need to cop out. It is what keeps us sane sometimes, for we do often experience the same stuff sometimes. Thus, in this beautiful collection of poetry, Dr. Wesley invites us to laugh and cry with her and, thus, to cling to one more bit of our seemingly ephemeral sanity. Poetry does that for us sometimes. As Emily Dickinson wrote: MUCH madness is divinest sense/ To a discerning eye;/ Much sense the starkest madness./ `T is the majority." The poet is definitely not part of "the majority," at least not the good poets. Dr. Wesley is one of the good poets. In Toni Morrison's novels, the seemingly insane are the ones with all the knowledge, and these seemingly insane usually are African ancestors. Here's to our living African ancestor, who writes of her experiences, in Africa as well as in America, hoping to bring knowledge to her future, to her children as well as to other heirs of her art. In Dr. Wesley's poem, "Coming Home: For Besie-Nyesuah," the persona states the following in reference to the experience of coming to America: ". . .in the Diaspora. In America, we are the new nomads,/ the wanderers coming home or looking to make/ home or running away from home among new people,/ and, one by one, our children, who will never know/ where we really come from, are leaving only to come/ back to decorative lights/ Christmas trees, holiday/ music, and turkey baking in the oven, stuffing,/ and pies. We are becoming new people, I tell myself." In THE RIVER IS RISING, Dr. Wesley invites us all to become "new people," learning from ourselves as well as from others. This book is perfect for the holidays. It is quite timely and would make a great Christmas gift or any gift during this increasingly commercialized season. This book makes us want "to sit a while and think," as Lorraine Hansberry's African character, Asagai, advises in the play, A RAISIN IN THE SUN. "Never be afraid to sit a while and think." Buy the book; it will make you think.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wesley delivers a powerful book of poetry with "The River is Rising",
By
This review is from: The River Is Rising (Perfect Paperback)
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's "The River is Rising" is a unique, fascinating, and brutally honest book of poetry. It tells the story of a brave woman overcoming the harshness that life has thrown at her and surviving the Liberian civil war. The interweaving of the stories of her life in Liberia and of her life in America is brilliant. Her voice is startlingly real (you can tell that she's speaking straight from her heart) and even with the sadness of the poems themselves, she injects a wry humor into her writing that is refreshing. I was lucky enough to hear Patrica read at the book launch for this book in Pittsburgh. Her voice is exactly the way it comes across in the book: strong and wise, with soft humor and a gripping intensity. It's been a couple of weeks now, but I can still hear her as she read the title poem, "The River is Rising." It's hard to find a book today that makes you sit back and think about what it's trying to tell you, but I think that this is one of those rare books that will force you to feel everything the author is feeling and cause you to really stop and think about life.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Full River,
By Audre Charles "minguslorde" (new york) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The River Is Rising (Perfect Paperback)
This is a very mature, strong, full, vulnerable book. Like the river in its title, there is a certain ebb and flow between each poem in these pages. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, unlike many other bi-coastal writers, has discovered, finally, a voice that blends the Liberian repettion and musicality to the Midwestern (and now, Northeast) flat hills and flattened accents. Her stories are troubling--wars that are personal and contentious; issues of raising children in a space not her own, yet completely her own; finding new ways to negotiate the spaces she finds herself paddling in; a now adult daughter, emboldened by her college-freedom; coming to terms with the loss of her mother. These are the troubled waters of content in Jabbeh Wesley's new collection, but there is language here and tone that are adept at saying precisely what lies at the river's shallow edges and deep ends. Jabbeh Wesley has stories to tell & languages & music & precision to tell them.
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