Warsan Shire wrote a pamphlet. It wasn’t a massive, five-hundred-page hardcover tome you’d find gathering dust on a mahogany bookshelf. It was thin. Modest. But when teaching my mother how to give birth dropped in 2011, the literary world basically shook. Honestly, it’s rare for a collection of poems to transcend the "poetry person" bubble and leak into the mainstream consciousness, yet Shire managed it before she was even thirty.
You’ve probably heard her voice without realizing it. If you watched Beyoncé’s Lemonade, you’ve heard Shire’s words. She’s the one who gave that visual album its skeletal structure, its haunt, and its grit. But before the Grammys and the global superstardom, there was this specific collection of poems that explored what it means to be a woman, a refugee, and a daughter in ways that feel almost too intimate to read out loud.
What Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth Is Really About
People get the title confused. They think it’s a medical manual or some weird parenting guide. It’s not. It’s metaphorical, visceral, and kinda painful. The "teaching" isn't about the biological act of labor; it’s about the reversal of roles that happens in immigrant families. It’s about a daughter who has to navigate a new world and then translate that world back to the woman who brought her into it.
Shire was born in Kenya to Somali parents and raised in London. That specific intersection—the Somali diaspora—is the heartbeat of the book. She writes about the body like it’s a war zone because, for many of the women she’s describing, it actually was.
The Weight of "Home"
There’s a line in the poem Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre) that went viral years ago: "No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark."
It’s been plastered on protest signs from London to New York. It’s shorthand for the refugee crisis. Shire doesn't do "pretty" metaphors. She doesn't talk about the sea being blue; she talks about the sea being safer than the land. When you’re teaching my mother how to give birth, you’re essentially dissecting the trauma that gets passed down through DNA.
The poems are short. Some are just a few lines. Others stretch out, but they all feel like they were written in a fever. She tackles female genital mutilation (FGM), displacement, and the specific way men can break a woman’s spirit without ever touching her. It’s heavy stuff.
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Why Warsan Shire’s Style Broke the Internet
Long before TikTok poets and Instagram "aesthetic" verses were a thing, Shire was using the internet to build a following. She was a Tumblr poet in the best way possible. Her work had this raw, unedited quality that made people feel like they were reading someone's private DM or a scrap of paper found on a bus.
- The Lack of Pretense: She doesn't use "thou" or "hitherto." She talks about lipstick, underwear, and the smell of burnt hair.
- The Rhythm: It’s jagged. She’ll give you a beautiful image and then immediately punch you in the gut with a brutal reality.
- The Focus on the Physical: Everything is grounded in the body. Hunger, sex, blood, sweat. It’s very "fleshy."
Some critics back then tried to dismiss it as "confessional poetry," a term often used to belittle women writers who talk about their feelings. But Shire isn't just talking about feelings. She’s documenting a history that usually gets erased. She’s giving a voice to the Somali women who were told to keep their mouths shut and their kitchens clean.
The Beyoncé Connection and the "Lemonade" Effect
When Beyoncé released Lemonade in 2016, the world went into a frenzy. Who wrote these interludes? The answer was Warsan Shire.
The collaboration was a match made in heaven. Beyoncé provided the visual grandiosity, and Shire provided the internal monologue. Specifically, poems from teaching my mother how to give birth and her later work were adapted to weave the story of betrayal and redemption.
The line "I have beauty as a weapon to shield the embarrassment of my age" isn't just a cool caption for a selfie. It’s a commentary on the performance of womanhood. Shire’s involvement shifted her from a "cult favorite" to a household name, but it also sparked a conversation about credit and how Black women’s intellectual labor is consumed. Luckily, Shire was front and center, finally getting the flowers she deserved for a book that had been out for five years already.
Addressing the Misconceptions
One thing people get wrong is thinking this book is only for people from the Somali diaspora.
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Sure, the cultural markers are specific. The mention of diracs and the smell of frankincense. But the core themes—the tension between mother and daughter, the fear of losing your culture, the struggle to own your own body—those are universal. You don’t have to be a refugee to understand the feeling of being "too much" for a room.
Another misconception? That it’s a "sad" book.
It’s definitely tragic in parts. But there’s also a lot of power in it. There’s a defiance. Shire isn't asking for pity. She’s demanding witness. She’s saying, "This happened, it’s happening, and I’m the one who’s going to tell you about it." That’s not sad; that’s a flex.
The Impact on Modern Literature
You can see Shire's fingerprints on almost every popular poet writing today. Whether it’s Rupi Kaur or Nayyirah Waheed, the "Short-Form Emotional Punch" style owes a huge debt to Shire’s 2011 pamphlet.
But Shire is different because she leans into the "ugly" parts of the immigrant experience. She doesn't try to make it palatable for a Western audience. She doesn't explain the Somali words she uses. She doesn't apologize for the violence in the text. This "take it or leave it" attitude is exactly why the book has such a long shelf life.
It’s about 34 pages long. You can read it in twenty minutes. But you’ll probably think about it for twenty years.
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Actionable Ways to Engage With the Work
If you’re just discovering Shire now, don’t just buy the book and let it sit on your nightstand. Poetry is meant to be used.
1. Listen to her read.
Warsan Shire has a specific, melodic way of speaking. Look up her recordings on YouTube or Bandcamp. Hearing her pronounce the Somali words and navigate the line breaks changes the entire experience. It’s like hearing a song after only ever reading the lyrics.
2. Look into the "Young Poets Network."
Shire was the first-ever Young Poet Laureate for London. If you're a writer, look into the organizations that supported her early career, like Spread the Word or the African Poetry Book Fund. They are goldmines for discovering "the next" Warsan Shire.
3. Read the contemporaries.
If teaching my mother how to give birth resonated with you, check out Safia Elhillo’s The January Children or Ladan Osman’s The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony. They are writing in the same vein—exploring the intersections of African identity, womanhood, and migration.
4. Annotate your copy.
This isn't a precious textbook. Circle the lines that make you feel uncomfortable. Note the ones that make you think of your own mother. Shire’s work is a conversation, so talk back to it.
The reality is that teaching my mother how to give birth changed the trajectory of contemporary poetry. It proved that you don’t need a massive publishing machine or a traditional "literary" background to reach millions of people. You just need a voice that’s too honest to ignore. Warsan Shire didn't just write poems; she built a house for people who didn't have one, and fifteen years later, the doors are still wide open.