Named a Notable African Book of 2023 by Brittle Paper
Breaking the Silence is the first comprehensive collection of literature from Liberia since before the nation’s independence. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley has gathered work from the 1800s to the present, including poets and emerging young writers exploring contemporary literary traditions with African and African diaspora poetry that transcends borders. In this collection, Liberia’s founding settlers wrestle with their identity as African free slaves in the homeland from which their ancestors were captured, and writers of the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries find themselves navigating a landscape at odds with itself.
From poets of Liberia’s past to young writers of the present, the contributors to this volume celebrate the beauty of their nation while mourning the devastation of a long, bloody civil war.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1. Early Liberian Poetry, 1800–1959
Hilary Teage
Land of the Mighty Dead
Hymn
Daniel Bashiel Warner
“All Hail, Liberia Hail,” Liberian National Anthem
Wishing to Be “21”
Robert H. Gibson
Heavenly Rest Implored
Rise, Take Up Thy Bed and Walk
Song of the First Emigrants to Cape Palmas
Anonymous
St Paul’s River Liberia
Pierre
The Emigrant’s Hymn
Edwin James Barclay
The Lone Star: A National Song
To Pauline—a Flirt
To Lygia
To Jealous Lygia
Human Greatness
Afric’s Lament
The Race-Soul
The Ocean’s Roar
Dawn
Song of the Harmattan
The Past
Part 2. Liberian Poetry, 1960–1989
Rev. Father James David Kwee Baker
O Maryland! Dear Maryland!
Land of the Beautiful
Cavalla Grand
Ode to Cape Mount
Divine Guidance
Roland Tombekai Dempster
Is This Africa
Africa’s Plea
The Lone Star Shines
When You Die—a Philosophy of Life
The Poet’s Ear
Take the World Away, but Give Me Freedom
Go On and Do, Let the People Talk
To Man
The Pepper Bird Is Singing
Liberia in Verse and Song
H. Carey Thomas
A Sonnet—the Poet’s Soul
Ask Me Why
No Longer Yesterday
Because You Told Me
When You Sigh
At Sunset
Echoes of a Longing Heart
The Tom-Toms Beat No More
Bai T. Moore
Ebony Dust
Monrovia Market Women
Africa in Retrospect
The Legend of Shad Tubman
A Wingless Bird
My Africa
The Bulldozer
The Hallelujah Stuff
Yana Boys
The Strength of a Nation
Ko Bomi hee m koa
Ba nya m go koma
Kona Khasu (James Roberts)
Dear Patrice Lumumba
Our Man on Broad Street
Unnamed Thing
Their Words—Deception
To Time Our Enemy
The Old Stream
Part 3. Contemporary Liberian Poetry, 1990–Present
Althea Romeo-Mark
Who’s on Watch?
Visiting Khufu
Oya (Wind in Cape Town)
A Different Kind of Pied Piper 2020
The Cat-Gods Have Fallen
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Praise Song for My Children
November 12, 2015
What Took Us to War
When Monrovia Rises
I Want to Be the Woman
Biography When the Wanderers Come Home
We Departed Our Homelands and We Came
An Elegy for the St. Peter’s Church Massacre
They Want to Rise Up
Pittsburgh
Monrovia Women
I’m Waiting
Part 4. Emerging and Aspiring Liberian Poets
Barth Akpah
Harper Nedee?
Oche Dike Ala (Grandma Has Gone)
Jee-Won Mawein Esika Arkoi
A Woman
If
My Mother’s Tale
Watchen Johnson Babalola
While Tomorrow Waits
Divided We Stand
Edwin Olu Bestman
New Kru Town, Where I Come From
Darkness, the Surname of a Poor Lover
How to Write a Dirge for Liberia
Edward K. Boateng
Memories of Home
Curing My Mother’s Wound
Genealogy of the Fourteen Pieces of Liberia
Maybe I’ll Go Home
Tetee Alexandra Bonar
He Stole a Piece of Me
Chorlyn E. Chor
Identity
Sunny Eddie Crawford
You Are Mine
Words in Portrait
Arthur Shedrick Davies
Deepu: A Definition of Divinity
Origins of the Poet Next Door
This Is Poetry
Maureen Jennifer Davies
Free Me
Essah Cozett Diaz
Our Mother Is Gold
When a Rolling Stone Leaves Pebbles Behind
For Daughters Who May Never Be Mothers
For Women Who Are Water in Fields of Rice
From Coal Pots to Gas Stoves
I Wasn’t Ready to Open My Eyes
Mawata Dukuly
The Brown Beauty
Who Is a Leader?
James Varney Dwalu
The Oppressed
I Am Nothing (Neutrality)
Cynthia Senu Gailor
Where Were You?
Daniel W. Garteh Jr.
Quarantine in Hope
Cherbo Geeplay
Africa
Aloysius S. Harmon
The Diary of an Orphan
Pain as Metaphor
West Point, Liberia
Ruby M. Harmon
Nah Fooh, Nah Fooh
Grey Stone Blues
Mother and Daughter
Quita Harvey
We Need to Pass It On
Laurel Iloani
One World, One People
Patrice Juah
The Ebola Ride
An Afro-Madrileña Love Note
McChen A. D. Kanneo
Ebony Perfection
Jeremy Teddy Karn
The Making of Grief
Elegy for a Friend
Evelyn Kehleay-Miller
My First Winter
Kerry Adamah Kennedy
I Live Where Billboards Are Broken
Home
Janetta Konah
Water Birds
My Grieving Mother
Memorabilia
Nvasekie Konneh
The Life of a Poet
My Father’s Last Prayer
Lekpele M. Nyamalon
Rock Your Jaws
You Post Stockade
Jackie Sayegh
Say Nothing
Eunice Sua Seyaker
Sing to Me, Ade: On Reading “Praise Song for My Children”
Lamelle Shaw
Ashes of My Heart
Mohamed Sheriff
Nomad Child
The First Heartbeat
Joshua T. G. Smith
Tragedies
Prince U. D. Tardeh
Let’s Be Cool
Augustine F. Taylor Jr.
Red Light
Ayouba Toure
Earth’s a Battlefield
On Searching for Peace from Within
The Women of Monrovia Are Citizens of Heaven
Rebirth
Kulah K. Washington
The Home in Ruin
Vermon Washington
Peace
If We Could Love Again
Othello Weh
Monrovia Vagrants
Sit Down
Monrovia Flood
Korto Williams
The Secrets of September
Masnoh Wilson
As If I Never Left
Source Acknowledgments
Contributors
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a professor of English, creative writing, and African literature at Pennsylvania State University–Altoona. She immigrated to the United States with her husband and children in 1991, during the Liberian civil war. Wesley is the winner of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation and is the author of six collections of poetry, including Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems, winner of the 2023 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize; Becoming Ebony, a 2002 Crab Orchard Award winner; and When the Wanderers Come Home (Nebraska, 2016). She is a founder of Young Scholars of Liberia.
