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��Poetry gives a voice to the voiceless,�� Turkish poet Gonca Özmen once of poetry’s power, ��it makes the invisible visible.�� Harnessing the gift of words and poetry is especially empowering for those who feel overlooked, cast out, misunderstood or simply desiring to be heard. Such is the desire of Sudanese-American teenager Samira in Safia Elhillo’s powerful novel in verse, Bright Red Fruit, a YA coming-of-age tale where poetry becomes an outlet for Samira to examine her identity and interpersonal relationships. Stifled by a “bad girl�� reputation with her aunts back home, Samira heads to New York City for a fresh start in poetry workshops only to find the path littered with manipulative men and never quite free from her mother’s grip. A moving and poetically elegant novel that integrates the myth of Persephone as thematic texture to Samira’s own story, Bright Red Fruit is as empowering as it is inspiring.

��i am going to show him i'm a serious artist
just like him, that i'm grown, just like him
not a kid, but a poet, a woman.��

Having rather loved Safia Elhillo’s poetry—her collection Girls That Never Die is simply outstanding—I was excited to check out her YA novel in verse. Addressing many of the themes that appears in her adult work, yet gorgeously reconfigured into a narrative for a YA audience with relatable characters struggling with one another and their own destructive impulses, Bright Red Fruit tackles rather heady and heavy topics with grace. I really enjoyed the way the novel is in poetic form, befitting it’s narrative, with the use of emails and text exchanges threaded in quite effectively. Samira’s own poetry appears and Elhillo does an excellent job of crafting them in a way to show her improve and edit her own ideas that felt appropriate for a novel about poetry workshops.

��In New York I think I can finally be free.��

Samira is a character who admits ��ever since i was small i’ve wanted to be loved,�� but often finds the love of family to be cloying and seeks affirmation in unhealthy spaces—such as the attention of an older man who’s poetry she admires. Yet she is determined to be her own person and leaves for NYC knowing her reputation back home is a false impression of her where those who know her are quick to assume the worst.

��here's the story: in sixteen years my lips
have never been kissed, but my name spends years
kissed in every gossiping mouth, kissed
with disapproving teeth, kissed by the threat of
disgrace, of exile, my name kissed
by every whisper, by every shaken head
while i sit inside it, untouched & full
of a wanting i cannot name, of something doused
in gasoline & ready to catch��

Her mother will not allow her to continue poetry workshops if she has any romantic entanglements, yet she has caught the eye of Horus and is deeply infatuated with his gaze meeting her in desire. It is a well done look at how Samira, in her wish to be desirable, acts older than she is and is willfully ignorant to the red flags displayed by Horus who is manipulating her vulnerabilities. ��It’s intoxicating,�� she thinks, ��to be cared about like this / to have someone want so badly to know me.�� The reader, however, can detect a clear sense of grooming and a Elhillo does well by giving a narrative arc around Samira being able to recognize it herself and find a sense of identity and strength not dependent upon the desires of a romantic partner.

��In the tale of Persephone
which should be read

as an argument between the mother and the lover��
the daughter is just meat.��
��Louise Glück, from

The tale of Persephone is integral to the narrative yet, as Elhillo points out in an interview ��rarely had I read a version of that myth that centered on the agency of the daughter, where it is like the battle of wills between the mother and the kidnapper.�� Like the above Glück poem, which serves as an epigraph to the story, we see how Samira feels like a mere piece of meat caught between the wills of her mother and Horus. Glück’s poetry was a major influence of Elhillo as a poet. In an interview with Service 95, Elhillo recommends the collection Averno

��Louise was one of my most important teachers and this is my favourite of her books. Blunt and plainspoken and austere and still so vivid, so pretty. Such surprising musicality. My novel Bright Red Fruit owes a lot to the Persephone poems in this book.��

I enjoy the way Elhillo shapes this novel not necessarily as a retelling but with enough touchstones to the myth to make it relevant while also rectifying the tale by centering the Persephone-like character and giving her agency and a voice.

��the girl, throughout history
is still silent
a blank space for us all to color in
with whatever we already believe��

Safia Elhillo’s Bright Red Fruit is a lovely novel of poetry and identity. Exploring cultural and familial expectations, the struggles of finding a voice, navigating toxic relationships and surviving the teenage years, Elhillo writes with beauty and empathy for a rather engaging novel.

4.5/5