Besaydoo: Poems

Yalie Saweda Kamara's Besaydoo is a beautifully crafted love song to home, encompassing place, people, body, and language. She serves as a griot for the Freeborn in Oakland, the Sierra Leonean in California, the girl straddling womanhood, and the woman rediscovering herself, using multiple languages to highlight mechanisms for survival and abundance. The audiobook is available everywhere you listen to audiobooks.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 96 pages
Publication date: 22 February 2024
Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Selected by Amaud Jamaul Johnson for the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Yalie Saweda Kamara's Besaydoo is an exquisite ode to home—as a physical space, as a community, as a body, and as a language. A griot is a historian, a living storehouse of collective heritage, with "a story pulsing in every blood cell." In Besaydoo, Kamara assumes the role of griot for the Freeborn in Oakland, the Sierra Leonean in California, the girl navigating womanhood, and the woman rediscovering herself. She writes, "I am made from the obsession of detail," vividly bringing to life scenes from her diverse heritage, including her mother's singing, the aroma of savory lumpia, and a church where "everyone is broken, but trying." A multitude of witnesses. Kamara employs a rich tapestry of languages—including Krio, English, French, and various poetic dialects—to highlight mechanisms for survival and abundance. She writes, "I make myth for peace," as well as for loss, joy, kinship, and, most importantly, a country where Black signifies "steadfast and opulent," and "dangerous and infinite." She pens for a new America, where praise is abundant and Black lives thrive.

However, in Besaydoo, there is no distinction between the living and the dead. There is no past or present. Instead, there exists a joyful simultaneity—a liberating unity sustained by song.

The audiobook of Besaydoo, read by Yalie Saweda Kamara, is available on all audiobook platforms.

Weight: 290g
Dimension: 202 x 254 x 12 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781639550319