Daley-Ward - The Terrible

A powerful, unconventionally structured memoir recounting harrowing coming-of-age ordeals... Daley-Ward resists classification in this profound mix of poetry and prose.... [She] has quite a ferociously moving story to tell. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Yrsa Daley-Ward is a marvel. Her words twist and breathe like a living thing. In her debut memoir, she turns the story of her difficult coming-of-age, punctuated with terrible loss, into language that is impossibly beautiful, hopeful, and wise.

A stunning book; I will never forget it. Julie Buntin, author of Marlena Yrsa Daley-Ward is laying her pain bare and turning it into uplifting, unconventional poetry.... If readers thought she bared her soul through bone, her memoir The Terrible will be another lesson in how to fearlessly turn the pain of her past into uplifting prose. POPSUGAR

Yrsas work is like holding the truth in your hands. It sweats and breathes before you. A glorious living thing.

Florence Welch, of Florence + the Machine [Daley-Ward] has a knack for getting directly to a storys heat-point and, once there, to distill the emotions within it down to a line or two.... [An] impressive debut. Hanif Abdurraqib, The Atlantic [bone is], first and foremost, about being human, but [it] also thoughtfully, skillfully, and pissed-off-edly dive[s] into the complexities of race in our new world. Glamour Daley-Wards short poems cover subjects like depression, falling in and out of love, and sexuality, with a fierce staccato that, as the title suggests, cuts deep. Vogue [With] poems that touch the heart, question societal norms, and talk about the complexity of sexuality, [Yrsa Daley-Ward] has a book of great depth. HuffPost The perfect title for a book that looks for that hard place between the will and the flesh.... bone is a bounty of passionate and pained lines, narrators whose hearts have been turned, twisted, and sometimes stomped, but who remain open and willingbecause how else could we live? The Millionsbone opens with a small explosion.... bone is a bounty of passionate and pained lines, narrators whose hearts have been turned, twisted, and sometimes stomped, but who remain open and willingbecause how else could we live? The Millionsbone opens with a small explosion....

The poems that follow pick up the dual meaning... of threat and of erotic desire. Often, the two are intertwined.... Excellent. The Paris Review (Staff Picks) [bone] is an interrogation of self, offering a lyrical autopsy on the manner in which we are harmed by the traumas of those who share our dark skin, female gender, and cultural displacement. this whole book is an ache. and a balm. daley-ward effortlessly mines the bone. the diamond from the difficult. the things that are too bright and taboo. she lays her hands on the pulse of the thing.... an expert storyteller. of the rarest. and purest kind. nayyirah waheed, author of salt. and nejma PENGUIN BOOKS THE TERRIBLE

Mike Kobal Yrsa Daley-Ward is a writer and poet of mixed West Indian and West African heritage. nayyirah waheed, author of salt. and nejma PENGUIN BOOKS THE TERRIBLE Mike Kobal Yrsa Daley-Ward is a writer and poet of mixed West Indian and West African heritage.

Born to a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father, Yrsa was raised by her devout Seventh-Day Adventist grandparents in the small town of Chorley in the North of England. She lives in New York.

PENGUIN BOOKS An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 penguinrandomhouse.com Copyright 2018 by Yrsa Daley-Ward Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

ISBN 9780143132622 (pbk.) ISBN 9780525504535 (ebook) Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone. Cover design: Grace Han Version_1 For Little Roo. in love with how it happened so far, even the terrible things. Prologue My little brother and I saw a unicorn in the garden in the late nineties. Im telling you. Neither one of us made it up; it was as real as anything else.

Sometimes, when the world around us grew indistinct, when facts would blur into less certain truths and frightening things looked set to occur, the two of us could see clearly into the Fourth Dimension. So when Linford James was on a ladder at midnight, banging on the bedroom windows, shouting at Mum, and later, when the color in his throat deepened and they were nose to nose, neither one of them spotted the unicorn. Adults went about their lives missing beauty all the time. Little Roo was six. I was ten. The unicorn strode a couple of majestic laps of the garden, before vanishing completely into the rosebush.

The Fourth Dimension was our only explanation for this. We werent dreaming. That night, Mum called the police. The next evening, Linford was sleeping in her bed again, snoring the walls down in his frightening manner. The unicorn wasnt the only strange thing. What luck. What luck.

Little Roo often saw things written in the stars. Signs, Facts and Other Things. Im telling you. He knew why adults said the things they said. And why they didnt mean the things they said and even less what they did. Sometimes it wasnt answers that he found, but entirely perfect questions.

A genius, my little brother. Marcia Daley-Ward aka Mum had a slim waist (in the very beginning) soft hair a gorgeous smile (pearly arcs, those teeth. Shining church doors). Marcia had smiling eyes loose hips could dance as well as anyone on television lived with her grandparents in Kingston, Jamaica, and she was oh so kind, had some art about her. When told to go into the woods to choose a branch with which her grandfather would beat her little brother (for some tiny offense), chose a weak branch that came apart in her grandfathers hand and earned a beating too. Marcia was fourteen and still skinny when she flew over to England, alone and terrified with a baby in her belly.

The boyfriend at that time was not the babys daddy but none of that mattered, because everything was about to change. She had been sent for, finally, by her mother and would be as far away from all of these men as God would allow. She trembled when stepping off the plane. She was about to see her parents, for the first time in years. How would she tell them? How would she explain? Marcia is sixteen with screaming Baby Samson, in the Northwest of England. What a mess and hes only getting bigger.