Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's lush collection of poems Becoming Ebony is in many respects a memoir of the life she lost when she was forced to flee Liberia because of war. Naturally, a longing for family and the familiarity of home permeates this book. However, this is not simply a poetry of mourning or an excursion into some wistful fantasy of an African life. We are given a complex view of a society that was unmade by political convulsion and the resulting violence. Consequently, there is a meditative seriousness throughout. But these poems are shaped by combinations of humor, sharp sass, and anger and are conveyed with the kind of frankness and warmth that two friends share when they haven't seen each other in years. Another feature of this collection is Wesley's deft exploration of the quieter frictions between women and men, which clearly transcend national and cultural boundaries. I turn to poetry for the chance to see the difficult world rendered clearly and made bearable again.

Becoming Ebony is a book that does this generously." —Tim Seibles, author of Hammerlock and Hurdy-Gurdy   The poems of Patricia Jabbeh Wesley are fearless, eye-opening, breathtaking, and compassionate. She writes of a homeland devastated by war and violence, of a culture's survival beneath the flames of that war, and of the everyday courage of people whose stories would be lost if not for these poems. Wesley writes of her Liberia with urgency and with artistry, in poems that remain in the mind and heart long after the reader has closed Becoming Ebony . These are political poems in the best sense of the word—wise, necessary, undeniable." —Allison Joseph, author of Imitation of Life and In Every Seam.