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The Terrible: A Storyteller's Memoir

Yrsa Daley-Ward

4.19 · Rating details · 2,641 ratings · 328 reviews

From an explosive new literary talent, a searing, moving memoir of family, adolescence and sexuality.

'You may not run away from the thing that you are because it comes and comes and comes as sure as you breathe.'

This is the story of Yrsa Daley-Ward, and all the things that happened - 'even the Terrible Things (and God, there were Terrible Things)'. It's about her childhood ...more

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Kindle Edition, 224 pages

Published June 5th 2018 by Penguin Books

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Jun 15, 2018 Warda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: i-fell-in-love, author-of-colour

“Pull yourself together. You are an African, the most magical kind of human there is.”

I knew that this book would break my heart and it did. It’s a memoir of Yrsa dealing with life’s challenges (understatement) and it is a raw, brutal and honest account.

There are four parts to this book, each section exploring a different stage in the authors life, the tone of the book and the language changing with it and echoing its time frame.

Thought it is poetry, the writing does an incredible job of weavi “Pull yourself together. You are an African, the most magical kind of human there is.”

I knew that this book would break my heart and it did. It’s a memoir of Yrsa dealing with life’s challenges (understatement) and it is a raw, brutal and honest account.

There are four parts to this book, each section exploring a different stage in the authors life, the tone of the book and the language changing with it and echoing its time frame.

Thought it is poetry, the writing does an incredible job of weaving those four parts together and through it, a whole and vivid story was captured. It was extremely heavy to read at times, as the truth of it weighs you down.

As I was reading it, I was processing a whole range of emotions. What stood out to me the most — and this’ll have to do with me projecting out my own personal fear of having and raising children if that ever happens — is how difficult raising and nurturing one is, especially when you had to move countries. Serious props to those parents! There’s no way you could blame the mother for the unintentional neglect of her children. Or maybe it was intentional, but it was never the goal. The mother herself was dealing with her own set of problems, which unfortunately did have a knock-on effect in the neglect of her children and you can feel those words vibrating off the pages as Yrsa describes her desperate need for her mother to be there for her, to be loved. Thus, this led to her looking for ways to fill that void.

Themes such as immigration, parenthood (particularly single parenthood), race, drug abuse and depression are spoken of in a real and colourful way.

There’s a chapter that depicts depression in its most ugliest form and I’d probably recommend it for those pages alone. It is ridiculously powerful and god, it hurt to read.

I feel like I was wounded in the process of reading this book. I know it’ll linger for a while. It’s one of those stories that will have you looking at life from an angle you haven’t been exposed to before and if this isn’t what books should be doing, I don’t know what is.

Thank you Penguin UK for sending me a copy. ...more

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May 29, 2018 Jenna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir-biography, lgbtqia

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! I loved Yrsa Daley-Ward's book of poetry Bone and was thrilled to see she'd written a memoir. The Terrible is part verse, part prose, telling the story of Yrsa's life thus far. She grew up with her younger brother, living with her devout Seventh Day Adventist grandparents in the north of England. She never knew her father, only that he was a professor in Nigeria. Her mother had issues of her own, leaving her unable to raise Yrsa and Roo when they were younger.

Th ...more

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May 11, 2018 Roman Clodia rated it liked it

I didn't find this as fresh or original as I hoped: Daley-Ward creates a dark memoir of alienation, depression and a downward spiral of drink, drugs and sex, occasionally lit by flares of imagination and sparse moments of love and connection.

But I found this over-written in places, and the free-verse form gimmicky with random line breaks and occasional right-margin justification which have no effect on meaning or interpretation.

There's so much white space on each page that this is a speedy read ...more

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Jun 29, 2018 Read By RodKelly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I knew this would be great but wow!

This memoir-in-verse is stunningly candid, often invoking painful memories that highlight what seems to be universal pain and trauma that black children inherit from their parents. The truth of this touched me while I read because Yrsa Daley-Ward does not shy away from the subject: she points a finger at her mother's parenting, her grandparents religious strictness, the stream of men who treated her as a sexual object, and consequently, her foray into being a ...more

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May 18, 2020 Paris (parisperusing) rated it it was amazing

Everything about this book hurts.
Everything about this book is beautiful.

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Sep 06, 2018 leynes rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: black-writers

Disclaimer: I won this book for my BookTubeAThon Book Dominoes Challenge (woop woop!), I wasn't asked to review it but since I got it for free and wouldn't have picked it up on my own I think it's important to mention that. ///

I always feel like the ultimate asshole when I rate biographies and memoirs low because who am I to judge another person's life or how a person decided to share their experiences with the world, yet here we are. And I feel like a douche saying it: but The Terrible was pre Disclaimer: I won this book for my BookTubeAThon Book Dominoes Challenge (woop woop!), I wasn't asked to review it but since I got it for free and wouldn't have picked it up on my own I think it's important to mention that. ///

I always feel like the ultimate asshole when I rate biographies and memoirs low because who am I to judge another person's life or how a person decided to share their experiences with the world, yet here we are. And I feel like a douche saying it: but The Terrible was pretty dang terrible. I don't think I've ever read a memoir that was as badly written, and that is coming from a girl who highkey struggled with Trevor Noah's Born A Crime.

Yrsa Daley-Ward is a poet. She has published her first poetry collection Bone to great success in 2014. She belongs to the new generation of modern poets, the ones that get easily belittled and referred to as "Insta Poets". Now, I don't want to disrespect her or her work, and I genuinely believe that poetry comes in many different shapes and forms, but this particular style of poetry is totally 100% absolutely not for me. It isn't original and seems very "copy & paste".

By "this style", I refer to modern poets who count on simplicity and loose structures, whose poems are often made up of just a few sentences. Again, nothing wrong with that, it just doesn't work for me. The reason why I was still excited to pick up The Terrible was the fact that this is a lyrical memoir, not a traditional poetry collection. Yrsa talks about her life, her upbringing in particular, about all the things that happened to her, 'even the Terrible Things (and God, there were Terrible Things)'.

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. Other major influences in her life are, of course, her careworn mother Marcia, Linford (the man formerly known as Dad, 'half-fun, half-frightening') and her little brother Roo, who 'sees things written in the stars'. It's about growing up and discovering the power and fear of her own sexuality, of pitch grey days of pills and powder and encounters. It's about damage and pain, but also joy.

Intentionally, Yrsa chose verse over prose as a means to tell her story. Unfortunately, that style didn't work for me. I think that The Terrible is extremely badly written, and the fact that Yrsa tried to be poetic in her writing made everything even more terrible (no pun intended). Her life and all of the things she had to endure growing up would've made the perfect foundation for a memoir. For a woman so young, she sure as hell has gone through a lot already.

She grew up extremely poor and under extremely shady circumstances, her stepdad is honestly one of the creepiest men I've read about in a while. The moments that got the most under my skin were the ones in which Yrsa narrates how her mother tried to protect her from the sexual advances of her stepdad when Yrsa was as little as seven years old.

In her late teens, she worked as a sex worker and did a lot of drugs. She grew estranged from her family, wanted to be independent. The only reason why I rated this memoir two instead of just one star is exactly that reason: her life story had the potential of being compelling. I appreciate the fact that she shared it with the world. We need more Black female writers writing unapologetically about what they had to endure, how they create art, what life means to them.

I, for my part, hold no grudge against Yrsa in any shape or form. I'm glad she's out here striving, her work is just not for me. I try to incorporate quotes into my reviews, I just couldn't find any in this collection that were worth sharing. Everything I underlined was rather cheesy or generic. But that's okay. There are many readers who differ with me on this subject and who are out there eating that shit up. And that's okay too. ...more

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Jul 14, 2018 Nina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-read, by-black-women, i-own, non-fiction, biography-or-memoir, poetry, favourite, favourite-authors

A few months ago I read Bone, and the only thing I had to say at first was that I so badly wanted to hear the poetry spoken out loud. Then, at the beginning of June, I actually got the opportunity to see Yrsa, as her book tour for The Terrible had a stop in my city. Listening to her speak was as beautiful and as powerful as I had imagined, and walking out of that bookshop, I felt so inspired. Since that day I’ve had a copy of The Terrible, but have been waiting for the right time to read it. Thi ...more

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Jun 22, 2018 Lara Kareem rated it it was amazing

This book is so terribly good, it carries Yrsa's essence from the onset to the end. It is one dark tale, with glimpses of lights here and there, but so dark and powerful, Yrsa can't help but capture my attention with her story.

To me this memoir is one of a kind because it is truly a piece of art, it's like reading a beautiful long poem, verse-prose? that starts with how she came to be in this terrible hard world and how from an early age she had to learn to always look out for herself, in order ...more

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Jul 29, 2018 Nikita Gill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I love Yrsa Daley-Ward. I love the way she visualises her world. I love the way her brain works, and the way she puts pen to paper. Her work on instagram is gorgeous, but this, this was something otherworldly altogether. To make it clear, I have not yet read Bone, so this is the first full body of work I have read by Daley-Ward and it stunned me. Her command over language, her effective and simple way of telling an explosive story, it's all there. All of it. I wept for her in this memoir. I foun ...more

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Sep 09, 2020 Fatma rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020-favs, favs, non-fiction

what a beautiful memoir. Yrsa Daley-Ward performs the hell out of the audiobook too. the byline of this book says it's "A Storyteller's Memoir," and it is absolutely right. ...more

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May 17, 2018 Laura King rated it it was amazing

Yrsa Daley-Ward's memoir is a breath of fresh air, though the content can be heartbreaking at times. She tells her story through poetry and through prose, in mixing both manages to keep their reader on their toes and refuses to let itself be just a standard autobiography. It tells the story of her mixed West Indian and West African heritage, the devout grandparents who brought her and her little brother up in the north of England, and her working out sexuality and trauma, and emerging as the adu ...more

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Sep 15, 2018 Alice Lippart rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry, read-in-2018

Beautiful, raw and honest.

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jun 12, 2019 Debbie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, nonfiction, memoir

Yrsa outdid herself in this one, my good folks.

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Jun 30, 2020 Katie.dorny rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lgbtq, non-fiction, 2020

A breathtaking and heartbreaking about growing up in the North of England and the trials and tribulations of growing up.

This memoir is mostly told in verse and dabbles in various different sentence structures which I loved. Everything became so intense and was so quick to draw you in and fly through.

There was nothing I didn’t love.

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Jun 15, 2018 Melody rated it really liked it

Shelves: genre-memoirs-and-bios, 4-and-a-half-stars-gets-a-yaaasss, break-my-heart-whydontcha, girl-you-get-a-side-eye, fc-with-issues, oh-my-poor-baby, whoa-this-is-heavy-doc, achingly-beautiful, hard-to-put-down, ngl-i-teared-up

4.5 stars - An emotional sucker punch.

Don’t you know you’re one of the lucky one? shouts the terrible. Don’t you know I’ve got you, you ungrateful, ungrateful creature? You wretch! Don’t you know those dark times kept you stronger? (thus sayeth the terrible). Don’t you know without me you would be just another girl with an everyday life and an almost-house always under construction and a man you tolerate and don’t really love and a father you met but who stopped you from doing anything and se

...more

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Feb 21, 2020 Megan O'Hara rated it liked it

Shelves: my-big-fat-catalogue

it was written as prose/verse to pretty much no effect and no offense to her or her story but this felt like a lot of other memoirs about being depressed and fucked up that I need to stop reading in general.

cw: sexual violence, rape, pedophilia, suicide

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May 31, 2018 Gabriella rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, 2018-reads, queer-stories, pride-month-18

I was excited to read this book, because while I'm not really a fan of Yrsa Daley Ward's poetry, I do think the clarity she employs in that work would make for an intriguing memoir.

Not many things here are new experiences—oppressively religious grandparents, confusing and/or concerning childhood experiences with sexuality, and lots of self-despair, all of which funnel into a gripping depression beginning in Daley-Ward's young adult years, which we are still in the thick of by the end of this mem I was excited to read this book, because while I'm not really a fan of Yrsa Daley Ward's poetry, I do think the clarity she employs in that work would make for an intriguing memoir.

Not many things here are new experiences—oppressively religious grandparents, confusing and/or concerning childhood experiences with sexuality, and lots of self-despair, all of which funnel into a gripping depression beginning in Daley-Ward's young adult years, which we are still in the thick of by the end of this memoir. To her credit, these situations are described very well, as her brand of "storytelling" is both jarring and intimate, allowing readers a window seat into every emotion she describes. At the same time, she carries none of the graceful, trite pleasantries she could have described her life happenings with. While another memoirist would have been stifled from telling her full story due to a respect for elders, confines of feminine propriety, and so on, Daley-Ward tells her truth with a child's blunt honesty and a teenager's grudge, making for a story that gives no character the easy treatment.

Despite all these strengths, I felt like we travelled from her teenage years to young adulthood much too quickly, and confusingly. One day we wake up and she's doing ecstasy with another escort co-worker, and I just wasn't sure where/when the shift occurred. It's partially because this shift does NOT occur from a narrative perspective—in describing her early adult life, Daley-Ward never quite loses that teenager's rash, crestfallen perspective on the world, in a way that makes this book seem hasty and stunted. The end of this book felt very underprepared, with no real revelation or conclusion to these stories that I could find, and I think it's partially because our narrator hasn't yet found them herself.

I think books like these are one of those arguments for people waiting until they're older to recount their "life stories" in a memoir. Daley-Ward is only 29, and you can tell that she hasn't quite come to terms with her experiences in a way that could offer a clear arc to them. I'd love to see what this book might have looked like had it been written another 10 years down the road... ...more

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Feb 06, 2020 Madalyn (Novel Ink) rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-physical, library, 2018-releases

This was beautifully written (and beautifully read by the author in the audiobook)! I’ve been on a memoir kick recently and this one is absolutely worth your time.

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Sep 27, 2019 Mel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, own-it

In a style that transitions between traditional prose and a modified verse as well as first, second AND third person, Yrsa tells a heart-wrenching story of her mother’s troubles following a young pregnancy with her older brother and her own life as she grew up, exiled to her grandparents’ house because Marcia (her mother) had a boyfriend who couldn’t be trusted with Yrsa’s growing body. Separated from her younger brother, Roo, and her only parent Yrsa was forced to follow the strict religion of ...more

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Aug 03, 2020 chantel nouseforaname rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-star, black-women-writers, heavy, high-impact-reads, 5-star-memoirs

The way that pain echoes out in a life can either be constructed towards something larger than itself or internalized and carried to the grave. Yrsa Daley-Ward is an incredible writer.

After spending the majority of this weekend watching and re-watching Beyonce's new release Black Is King I kept seeing Yrsa's name as one of the main writers of the story. This led me to want to engage with more of her work, so I decided today to read her memoir. I own a copy of Bone, which I read years ago, but t The way that pain echoes out in a life can either be constructed towards something larger than itself or internalized and carried to the grave. Yrsa Daley-Ward is an incredible writer.

After spending the majority of this weekend watching and re-watching Beyonce's new release Black Is King I kept seeing Yrsa's name as one of the main writers of the story. This led me to want to engage with more of her work, so I decided today to read her memoir. I own a copy of Bone, which I read years ago, but this has been on my read list for some time.

The Terrible is infinitely relatable. It's also a crazy read because when you can remember being a 14 year old girl fighting off the leers of older men, trying to understand how you became objectified without your consent and what your emotions are around that and then someone fearless like Yrsa comes and paints the picture of what happened.. it feels alarming. It feels like, how many of us? The adultification of young black and brown girls jumps in your mind and won't leave you. It's eye-opening when you read this true story, a story that has roots in so many young black women's lives that you know. You have to step back and marvel. You also cry.

Yrsa Daley-Ward details the experiences of many black youth trying to find their way in a world that seems at odds with the one that you experience at home. She exposed many of the circumstances that cause fraught family situations to be so. I loved this work. I loved it because it spoke to a part of me that seeks the green light towards releasing burdens carried. It spoke to the part of me that chases/chased down certain kinds of personal freedom. It was heartbreaking and incredibly distressing. There's beauty in doing for yourself, even when the methods hurt sometimes. It was anxiety provoking.

Her writing style going between poetry and short bursts of prose was dope. The exploration of the light experiences of childhood amidst the backdrop of familial strife and displacements, her rage, confusion and understanding... the resignation, curiosity, frustration and the need for kinship vs the chase for money, so many emotions and damn this book was short.

This book evokes the same feeling in me that watching I May Destroy You did. I understood yet felt upset by so much in here; although it was liberating to see her put it all out there. I highly recommend this. ...more

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Jun 06, 2018 Louise Pennington rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The Terrible is simply exquisite.

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Oct 29, 2018 Darkowaa added it · review of another edition

Review to come! I’m leaning towards 4.5 stars...

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Oct 12, 2018 Cardyn Brooks added it

Shelves: non-fiction, literature

The following review first appeared on MediaDiversified.org June 3, 2018.

Similar to the ways in which Billie Holiday and John Coltrane used the same musical notes and scales as other musicians yet managed to produce otherworldly compositions exponentially more complex than the sum of their individual elements, in The Terrible Yrsa Daley Ward has crafted a ballad of her life in prose poetry that exceeds conventional expectations of a memoir.

A prologue, four numbered sections, and an epilogue pr The following review first appeared on MediaDiversified.org June 3, 2018.

Similar to the ways in which Billie Holiday and John Coltrane used the same musical notes and scales as other musicians yet managed to produce otherworldly compositions exponentially more complex than the sum of their individual elements, in The Terrible Yrsa Daley Ward has crafted a ballad of her life in prose poetry that exceeds conventional expectations of a memoir.

A prologue, four numbered sections, and an epilogue produce a score of varying measure and tempo, volume and intensity. The rhythm of her revelations is supported by the layout of each page. This score also functions as a map of her many struggles with fatherlessness, family friction, undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues, self-medicating with controlled substances and risky behavior, sexual identity, grief, and internalized racism, misogyny, colorism, and classism.

Trying to satisfy her insatiable needs and appetites, which seem to be manifestations of her longing for permanence and reliable love, is a recurring motif. On page 68 she writes, “I wanted to… be completely adored and wanted and loved; I was sure of the heaven in that.” The Terrible documents her circuitous and dangerous search. Along the way the challenges in distinguishing fact from fiction regularly surface. The quirks of memory are mentioned on page 114 with “Sometimes the facts around our first meeting change.” And on page 165 a loved one’s ghost asks, “Can’t you see that by now I am entirely fact and entirely fiction?” This question resonates as an echo of the broader idea of memoirs as non-fiction because human recollections are influenced by circumstances and the passage of time. Maybe even the most honestly rendered memoirs are impressionistic works that convey the essential truth of a person’s experiences instead of an exact account.

Yrsa Daley-Ward imbues each description of terrible things with multiple facets of menace and painful consequences. In “awayness [sic]: an almanac” beginning on page 196 “the terrible” is a sentient entity acting as a schizophrenic hydra trickster parasite who harangues, distorts, and drains its host, but not completely or permanently. The Terrible begins with love and ends with hope.

There are few shining examples of manhood in The Terrible. Picking up a biography about Nelson Mandela or Sidney Poitier’s autobiography might help balance the emotional scales for disheartened readers. Dark Girls by Bill Duke and Daughters of Men: Portraits of African-American Women and Their Fathers by Rachel Vassel also offer mitigating spiritual boosts after reading this beautifully composed, emotionally wrenching memoir.
...more

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Jul 03, 2020 Katharine rated it it was amazing

I listened to this memoir in verse which was a wonderful reading experience. Yrsa's way with words has made her one of my favorites and I can't wait to pick up more of her writing. ...more

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Oct 19, 2018 Denise Cormaney rated it it was amazing

Finished this one in a day. Whoa. I've never read anything like it.

Sometimes we hear a story about someone who has labels that society is quick to judge (drug user, prostitute, private dancer/escort), and it's easy to see those labels and jump to those judgments, all the while forgetting the person is a human being with a story that led to the present circumstances. And chances are, this human being did not start out in life with a stable home environment and loving parents who one day dreamed ...more

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Aug 07, 2018 Jen Pennington rated it it was amazing

So glad I stumbled upon Yrsa Daley-Ward this year. Reading her work is like holding a beating heart in your hand. So alive and frightening and exciting and rare.

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Apr 17, 2020 A.M. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir-biography, poc-author

Can you believe I took this book all the way to and across Japan, and all the way back without reading it? Memoirs aren't usually my thing - hence the delay in picking it up - but this one packs a punch. I finally picked it up on Thursday night and finished it by Friday. 🙈

Daley-Ward writes poetically about growing up in northern England, discovering her sexuality, falling into drugs, battling to discover herself. It can be an uncomfortable read but the author's effortless, silken prose demands t ...more

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Mar 12, 2019 Claire rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reading-2019, beat-the-backlist-2019, uno-claire

Written in a combination of prose and poetry, this memoir evokes feelings of sadness, alienation and the need to belong.
The language is beautiful, the novel short, but it is a rather intense read.

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Jul 19, 2018 flannery rated it liked it

This is a good story but it's written as a poem, to no real effect, and I was like

why. ...more

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Oct 30, 2018 Samantha (AK) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2018, form-poetry, genre-nonfiction, genre-biography-memoir

Everyone has a story to tell, but not everyone knows how to tell a story. Often, the likability of a given memoir comes down not to the content, but the way in which the story is told.

That said, a lot of people are going to bounce off this book. Told in a stream-of-consciousness narrative that’s somewhere between plain verse and experimental prose, the size and placement of a word on the page as important as it’s dictionary meaning… it’s not the most accessible style. I think it works, though, f ...more

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About Yrsa Daley-Ward

Yrsa Daley-Ward

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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. Her first collection of stories 'On Snakes and Other Stories' was published by 3:AM Press.
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“I am somewhere else now. I am part human, part metaphysics, and I still haven't worked out which parts of me are which. I love this new form. I can feel space traveling through me. I am porous and wondrous and bold ... It's not that I loved to leave, rather that staying was always completely impossible.” — 7 likes

“Is life hidden in the lining of our seams? Are we wearing it inside out?” — 6 likes

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