Becoming Ebony - Brossura

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley was born in Tugbakeh, Maryland County, Liberia, and grew up in Monrovia. She is the author of Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa, which retells her experiences in the Liberian civil war. Her work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Crab Orchard Review, Midday Moon, and New Orleans Review. She lives with her husband and children in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and African Literature at Western Michigan University.

Recapturing the celebratory voice of Africa in poems that are both contemporary and traditional, Liberian-born Patricia Jabbeh Wesley weaves lyrical storytelling with oral history and images of Africa and America, revealing powerful insights about the relationship between strength and tragedy. Rooted in myths that can be traced to the Grebo tradition, Becoming Ebony portrays Wesley's childhood experiences of village talk and civil war, as well as her adult experiences of the pain of her mother's death and the difficulties of rearing a family away from home in the United States. Turning on the African proverb of "the wandering child" and the metaphor of the ebony tree - beautiful in life and death - these poems delve into issues of human suffering and survival, chronicling what happens "after the sap is gone."