Review: The Way It Is

The Way It Is by Shirani Rajapakse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

The Book ‘The Way It Is’, is about a poetry collection ranging from politics and racism to war and death. Even though the poems don't rhyme most of the time, it still has a great flow while reading. I really liked about this book how wide ranging the topics were in it. After reading about war, I was reading about how woman dress and misogyny and then after that about slavery. Poems express so much more than outspoken words ever can and Shirani Rajapakse kept me intrigued with her poetry collection till the end.

While reading I felt that these poems felt extremely personal and heartbreaking for me. The way the words were chosen for each poem, made me feel heard and understood, as I express the same feelings to certain topics that were covered in this collection. The poems were also not overly complicated, but rather easy to understand and follow. Length of each poem was perfect, never too long but also never too short. Often I feel while reading poems that they could have been longer but even sometimes shorter, but that wasn't the case here.

I also enjoyed a few poems a little bit more than some others (probably due to my opinions and view about them), for example, ‘Omnipresence’ is about politics and how it influences us.

Death on the high seas trying to get to safety,
only to find on reaching it was all a myth.
That’s politics.
Our beliefs and clothes are political.
Religious decrees to cover up in shrouds
lest someone sees and gets tempted to rape.

‘Your Children’ is about misogyny and how raising your son better would change the way how girls and women could act and dress around them. I think that telling a girl to adjust to something/someone due to boys that were raised in a bad way to be very wrong. If these boys would have been teached to respect females these females wouldn't need to walk home earlier or dress in a way where only the eyes are still seen.

"Your daughters are
receptors of knowledge, filled
with interesting ideas,
thoughts that could generate great
conversations, find solutions to the world’s
problems, if
you care to engage them in talk.
Don’t force them to be
something they are not, because your
sons have no control
over themselves.
Don’t shut them in,
imprison them
in shrouds, black cloaks
with only their eyes showing, covering
them up like corpses ready
to be thrown on
a communal burial heap."

There is so much more, but I don't want to spoil it, so read it yourself if you are interested in it. But beware that there are triggering content, which also triggered me, so check out my content warning for this book before reading it.

These poems were really great and thoughtful.
Thank you Shirani Rajapakse for the advanced reader copy of ‘The Way It Is’.

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StoryGraph review + content warning

Read: 28. November 2024
Reviewed: 29. November 2024

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