When the Wanderers Come Home is Patricia Jabbeh Wesley’s fifth poetry collection. An Associate professor of English and Creative writing at Pennsylvania State University-Altoona, her previous anthologies include, Where the Road Turns, 2010, The River is Rising, 2007, Becoming Ebony, 2003 and Before the Palm Could Bloom, 1998.
The predominant themes in all five collections are exile, survival and coming to terms with the impact of civil war in her birth home, Liberia, on the coast of West Africa. It is an experience she cannot shake; one she lives with every day.
In Book 1, Coming Home, When the Wanderers Come Home, the cause and effect of the Liberian Civil War (1999-2003) still confronts her. A wanderer, who has returned home after fleeing with her family; there is still an uneasiness. In her poem, “A City of Ghosts (p.33). Monrovia, personified, laments, “If I am haunted by ghosts/ If I am visited by all my weary mothers/and sisters and brothers, /if I am visited by friends who forget to take themselves/when they left themselves/then why are they not haunting/their murderers, those who carved them up like pieces of logs (p.33).” In “What Took Us to War,” she warns, “What took us to war has begun again…has opened it wide mouth again to confuse us (p. 7). “We are picking up the broken pieces of the years, erecting stones, so the future can live where we did not (p.9),” “War is not a friend of the living (p.11).” The daily news of death and the burial of survivors serve as a reminder of the civil war’s physical and mental toll. Jabbeh Wesley tell us that “Liberians are dying like earth worms after a long, rainy night (p.13).” And she simultaneously speaks of a cautious recovery: “Here, we’re all afraid that one of us might light a match and start the fire again (p.43).”
Covering a variety of subjects, Book II, Colliding Worlds, is lighter in content. It examines nations, cultures, nature’s effect on our environment, muses about the world we live in and she lets us in on her imaginary flights Book II also displays the author’s sense of humor. In it, Jabbeh Wesley recalls experiences in certain countries she visited (Colombia, Morocco, London, Libya). The poem, “Medellin from My Hotel Window,” comments on the long guerrilla war Colombia had gone through and compares this to her own civil war experience. She tackles the naming of hurricanes in her poem “Sandy,” and declares that, “A woman herself is a category 7 hurricane/so where do they come from/naming another hurricane after a woman…I do not know the language of storms and I do not wish to know (53).” In addition, she shares dreams and imagination. “Sometimes I wonder/do flies fall in love, /take their lovers out?/ Do they forget to keep a date (p.74).” Jabbeh Wesley also ruminates about her children’s loss. In “For My Children Growing up in America,” she wishes “they would be there for their cousins/who outnumber the grains of sands on the beach (p.58)…,and wishes they “had grown up where the trees do not lose their color (59).” Also, she leaves the dog lovers with much to smile and think about. The poems, “You Wouldn’t Let Me Adopt My Dog,” and “The Inequality of Dogs,” address different cultural realities. “Tell your dog I do not have the resume to tend an American dog/Tell him I am still African, in the way the mother woke up each day, wondering where the food for us children would come from.(“You Woudn’t Let Me Adopt My Dog, ”p. 61).”
Book III, World (Un)Breakable, mainly touches on her experience as a cancer survivor. In “Losing Hair,” she shares that “To keep life in my veins, they must purge all life out of my veins, Life for life, hair strand for hair strand, all the cells/of my body, crying out, ’don’t kill me’, but dying/still, so killer cells can drown themselves/in the war of life. I feel like I am again at war (p.107).”
When The Wanderers Come Home engages the reader with words that take long walks in your memory, opens doors you cannot shut. Images remain tattooed and turn your world upside down. I leave you with lines from the poem, “The Creation,” which did exactly that. “Woman was made so clothes would have something/ to wear. So shoes would find company, hair….Woman was made so pavement would have feet to carry... Woman was made/so men would have trouble to fall into…Woman was made/so worry would have a place to lease, so the sun/would find moon, so moon would find daylight/to blame for it own disappearance… (pp.18-19).” And with this poem, all the darkness of war and death, and near death, is shoveled under laughter and the stretching of one’s fantasy. It gives the reader a feeling of going somewhere new.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a poet I know personally. She was a student of mine when she was an English major at the University of Liberia (West Africa) where I taught English. Patricia went on to become my colleague when she returned to Liberia after earning an M.A. We were both impacted by the Liberian Civil War; she more than I did. My family managed to escape before the invasion of Monrovia by rebel soldiers. She has gone on to earn her Ph.'d and is now teaching others the craft of writing. She has used her gift as a poet to tell Liberia's story. Liberia's story is not only about war but also about its culture and its special place in African history. As a poet, she continues to put Liberia on the literary map. I am looking forward to reading her next collection. She has a lot to say and is not done. Her book is available at amazon.com.
Althea Romeo-Mark, Caribbean poet, and educator
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