Yisharah Zaryah
Yisharah Zaryah is one of six black children, her father is by way of Trinidad with origins in Saint Vincent & the Grenadines. Her mother is African American. Yisharah is a descendant of the people of the Caribbean Indians and the Amarak Indians; from there comes the Garifuna, a mixture of black African Maroons and the Caribbean Indian of the lesser Antilles who died fighting back against the European colonizers of their homeland using guerilla warfare and the right of self-determination. She carries their blood.
Yisharah is a native New Yorker and currently a Business Administration student. She lived for a short while in Canarsie, Brooklyn, but has lived most of her life in East Harlem, New York. She has witnessed family and friends die to the glory of riches and poverty in her lifetime and that’s why she participates in the development of those living in the underprivileged neighborhoods of New York City. She affirms that being in the struggle has taught her not only how to survive but inspired her to seek efficient ways to thrive.
Her poetry is greatly influenced by the works of Maya Angelou, Tupac Shakur, and the novelist Toni Morrison. In middle school, she held yearly poetry slams from the fifth to the eighth grade. Her mother was a writer so she would help Yisharah with her poems before she presented them to the class. After going to a poetry reading for Kristin Robie’s book, The Purest Tears Are Light, Yisharah Zaryah felt inspired to write her first collection of poems: Fifty Odes for the Soul.
