Review: Rising of the Black Sheep

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Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed reviews Rising of the Black Sheep, by Livia Kojo Alour.

As I journey with Livia Kojo Alour in Rising of the Black Sheep, the first thought that pops in my head – this is one unapologetically Black debut poetry collection.

Rising of the Black Sheep challenges. There is anger, passion, hope, and figuring out questions of identity, belonging and love. It screams at you and demands of you, to listen carefully and pay close attention to how every word is framed and positioned.

As for Alour’s writing! It is exciting, engaging, enticing, and enraging. This is a fearless poetry collection, which I absolutely love. Alour comes across as someone unafraid to say out loud the things that need to be said about colonialism, racism, patriarchy, white privilege, and how they shape (and have shaped) the everyday lives and identity of Black womxn in the Diaspora. The writing is honest and perceptive, and in that I offer thanks and appreciation to Alour for being so open in sharing intimate parts of her life with the reader, including the struggle, pain, and endurance.

Rising of the Black Sheep is told in five parts. I read it as sharing the different layers of Alour’s life from childhood to present day. The collection starts with Alour’s childhood – raised in suburban Germany in the 1980s and 1990s by an adopted white family. The challenges of feeling and being othered, and the conflicting emotions that came with loving and trying to be a loved in a very white setting where your otherness is extremely visible. This is captured aptly in ‘The Beginning of All Times’, fusing German and English, and which is dedicated to Alour’s mother:

growing up wasn’t easy
life ended early
society gaslit me out

And in ‘A Letter’, in which Alour explores her relationship with her mother and father. From a mother who ‘adopted a black child’, about which the father ‘had no say’. To the anger and frustration Alour felt as a child, trying to be noticed by her father:
The only way to your attention
was shouting very loud
to break through to you
the result was only blame
Of course I turned aggressive
after watching you
ignoring me
Alour’s otherness goes beyond the home to other white spaces. First, during childhood, as captured in ‘Blue Like Denim’, and then onto adulthood and Alour’s work as a performer, and the institutionalised racism described in ‘Oh So Other’:
For every door
that was pushed into my face
declaring me not worthy
of entering a sacred white space
for every time getting paid less
being called names
In the second section of the collection, Alour’s tiredness and anger born of repeatedly experiencing racism and microaggressions is expressed with full force. The reader is primed for what is to come: ‘Try to embrace being uncomfortable in the next chapter.’ Alour flips ‘otherness’, making sure those who ‘other’, who are prejudice, sit in their discomfort.
Cover_Rising of the Black Sheep by Livia Kojo Alour
Cover image by Verena Gremmer, designed by Peter Collins.

Alongside Alour’s own individual experience of oppression, Rising of the Black Sheep highlights systemic oppression and institutional racism experienced by Black people in the Diaspora. ‘Riot Poem’, for example, is dedicated to George Floyd. While many lines stick with me, a line in ‘Riot Poem’ soothed my soul, especially during times when all felt lost and there was no way out:

As long as we can walk / we can walk out
As long as we can run / we can run away
This is one of the many things about this collection that stands out for me. Amid anger and pain, there is always hope, which is needed to keep on going. Beyond hope, there is love. Love is something Alour gives to the reader in abundance, particularly in Part III, covering ‘Black Queer Love’, which is the section I connected most emotionally to. ‘I Quit Love’ has been me on too many occasions:

because I’ve believed for too long that love wasn’t made
for me. Decades of hope shattered by failure to ignite
my heart the way literature speaks of love.

The romantic dream, poets describe like walking heaven
on earth.

It scares me.

(I send an open request to Alour, that I may use ‘a love lost’ should an ex ever try to slide back in. The poem is short, sweet and straight to the point, yet cuts deep.)
Livia Kojo Alour at the launch of Rising of the Black Sheep
Photo by Sarah Hickson

In the final section, Alour declares that enough is enough. Alour has risen and will no longer be quiet. Alour embraces hair, skin, and a Black womxn’s body (inside and outside). Alour is also saying enough is enough to racism and patriarchy, calling for solutions, for white spaces to be decolonised, claiming a seat at the table, maybe even getting rid of it entirely, because we really do need new tables.

I began reading the collection feeling it was unapologetically Black, and it is. But I should have known that by opening with the words of Audre Lorde and bell hooks, this would also be a Black queer feminist journey. It is about finding, embracing, and loving yourself unapologetically, especially as a Black womxn in a world where too often your everyday reality tries to make you believe that you are not worthy of receiving love or being loved.

ZAHRAH NESBITT-AHMED IS A RESEARCHER AND WRITER INTERESTED IN WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND CAPTURING WOMEN’S LIVED EXPERIENCES. SHE HAS RUN A LITERARY BLOG, BOOKSHY, DOCUMENTING AFRICAN LITERATURE ON THE CONTINENT AND THE DIASPORA SINCE 2011 AND IS THE LITERARY MAGAZINE EDITOR OF REWRITE READS, FEATURING WRITING BY BLACK WOMEN AND WOMEN OF COLOUR. SHE IS CURRENTLY AN MA CREATIVE WRITING STUDENT AT BIRKBECK.

30 October 2022