Exiles of Eden

Poems steeped in the Somali tradition refract the streets of Ferguson, the halls of Guantánamo, and the fields near Abu Ghraib through the myth of Adam and Eve to ask: What does it mean to be a refugee?

Exiles of Eden looks at the origin story of Adam, Eve, and their exile from the Garden of Eden, exploring displacement and alienation from its mythological origins to the present. In this formally experimental collection steeped in Somali narrative tradition, Osman gives voice to the experiences and traumas of displaced people over multiple generations. The characters in these poems encounter exile’s strangeness while processing the profoundly isolating experience of knowing that once you are sent out of Eden, you can’t go back.

Publication date: May 7, 2019 

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9 

Page count: 96 pages

ISBN: 9781566895446

Ladan Osman, Somali-born poet and essayist, is the author of The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (University of Nebraska Press 2015), winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize, and the chapbook Ordinary Heaven, which appeared in the box set Seven New Generation African Poets (Slapering Hol Press 2014).

Winner of a 2021 Whiting Award

Winner of the 2020 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry

“Ladan Osman's dazzling and incisive poetry creates vibrant connections between generations of women, between the self and history, and between our bodies and the natural world.”

—The Whiting Awards Judges' Citation

“A generous, rooted, and humbly adamant quest for agency.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A stellar collection . . .  in this political moment charged with so much frustration and sorrow, Exiles of Eden offers the triumph we all need.” 

—World Literature Today

“Osman delivers an incredibly urgent call to action against founding narratives that are so prevalent in American society, and which are poisonous to women and people of color.”

—Africa is a Country

“Exile here is a daily longing, a gift and curse of an outsider eye, an experience that grapples with the word ‘relative’ in all its meanings.”

—The Adirondack Review

“There is informed wisdom to [Ladan Osman's] poetry, which, on top of being moving, inspires the reader with positive thinking. A wonderful collection.” 

—Nuruddin Farah

“Here there is pain and music and thirst and the refusal to bend into a narrative these women have not shaped for themselves.” 

—Donika Kelly 

“Exiles of Eden scares me. It’s that good. I didn’t know you could do with language what Osman does, but thank the gods she did.” 

—Danez Smith 

“[Osman] does the remarkable thing of detailing pain as places of departure, from a marriage, from a country.” 

—Ed Roberson

“In a world that too often plugs its ears to voices it thinks unworthy, Osman shows that it’s actually more inappropriate to be decorous.”

—The Chicago Tribune

“True visionary poets are very rare. Ladan Osman is one. What she sees is extraordinary, and needful.”

—Brigit Pegeen Kelly

“Osman is a worldly and acutely sensitive writer who knows how to reach right through the sequined veil of fashion and put her hand squarely on the reader’s heart, with frank and candid expression, with unaffected wonder.”

—Ted Kooser

“Osman is a warrior poet, and she is dangerous because she is especially gifted and disciplined about her craft.”

—Kwame Dawes