Now submitted to publisher
Africanization and Americanization: Searching for Inter-racial, Interstitial, Inter-sectional, and Interstates meeting spaces, Africa Vs North America, Volume 1
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Edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka is an editor, writer, visual artist and musical artist with 10 individual books published and 5 edited anthologies which include among others, Zimbolicious Poetry Anthology, Playing To Love’s Gallery, Counting The Stars, and many more here http://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/tendai-rinos-mwanaka. He writes in English and Shona. His work has appeared in over 400 journals and anthologies from over 27 countries. Work has been translated into Spanish, French and Germany.
Contributor’s Bio Notes
Tiel Aisha Ansari is a Sufi warrior poet. Her work has been featured by Fault Lines Poetry, Windfall, KBOO and Prairie Home Companion among others. Her books include Knocking from Inside and High-Voltage Lines. She works as a data analyst for the Portland Public School district and currently serves as president of the Oregon Poetry Association. Visit her online at knockingfrominside.blogspot.com
Rogers Atukunda is a Ugandan journalist, filmmaker, writer, researcher and educator. He studied English, Literature and Film at Makerere University, Kampala. Rogers is an upstart writer. He is a published poet and short story writer. His poem Delilah appeared in A Thousand Voices Rising, An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry. His short story Daniela was published in An Anthology of contemporary short stories and poems from East Africa. He has also written a critical paper titled: Swallowing a bitter pill; the subtext in Kihura Nkuba’s When the African Wakes (still unpublished). He was published in the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology.
Biko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Editor-In-Chief of the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies and author of Black Women and the Criminal Justice System: Towards the Decolonization of Victimization (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997) and also of Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason (London, Pluto Press, 2003).
Charlie R. Braxton is a poet, playwright and essayists from McComb, Mississippi. He is the author of two volumes of verse, Ascension from the Ashes (Blackwood Press 1991) and Cinder’s Rekindled (Jawara Press 2013). His poetry has been published in various literary publications such as African American Review, The Minnesota Review, The Black Nation, Massiffe, Candle, Transnational Literary Magazine, Eyeball, Sepia Poetry Review, Specter Magazine and The San Fernando Poetry Journal.
Katisha Burt is an Albany, NY native. She is an actor, self-published poet and educator. Katisha has self-published several works of fiction and poetry, as well as being published in several anthologies and poetry magazines. Her greatest passion, outside of teaching Middle Schoolers, is composing and producing poetry.
Frank De Canio: Born & bred in New Jersey, I work in New York. I love music from Bach to Amy Winehouse. Shakespeare is my consolation, writing my hobby. I like Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath as poets and host a philosophy workshop in lower Manhattan
Karl W. Carter, Jr. resides in Alexandria, Va. His poetry appears in numerous anthologies and Poetry Reviews/Quarterlies including: Three Poems (Broadside Press, 1972). Understanding the New Black Poetry (William Morrow, 1973); Synergy D.C. Anthology (Energy Black South Press, 1978); The Poet Upstairs: (1979); Drum Voices Review: Chicken Bones- A Journal 2005; Drum Voices Review 2012; Words of Protest, Words of Freedom, (2012). Delaware Poetry Review (2013); Beltway Poetry Quarterly.(2014); Broadkill Review Vol.8 No.4 (2014); Beltway Poetry Quarterly Best of the Net Nominee #3 (2014); Poet Lore Vol. 109, No. 3/4 (2014); About Place Journal, Vol.II, Issue IV (2014); Poetry Pacific, Spring Issue (5/5/2015); Journal of Hip Hop Studies Vol.3., Issue-1(2016). Delaware Poetry Review Volume 8 No.1(2017). He has also published a book of Poetry Southern Road and Selected Poems (2014)
Mbizo Chirasha is an acclaimed wordsmith, performances poet, widely published poet and writer. He is the Founder and Creative Director of several creative initiatives and projects, including Young writers Caravan Project, This is Africa Poetry Night 2006 – 2008, Zimbabwe Amateur Poetry conference 2007 – 2010, African Drums Poetry Festival 2007, GirlChildCreativity Project 2011- Current, GirlchildTalent Festival 2012. The widely traveled poet and creative projects consultant is published in more than 60 journals, anthologies, websites, reviews, newspapers, blogs and poetry collections around the world. Some of the countries he traveled to include Ghana, Sweden, Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Malawi. He co-authored Whispering woes of Ganges and Zambezi with Sweta Vikram from New York in 2010. His poetry collection Good Morning President was published by Diaspora publishers UK in 2011.
Yugo Gabriel Egboluche is a graduate of Geography from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He writes from Anambra State where he works as a Development Practitioner. Together with poetry, he does fiction, script-writing and copy-writing. His works have been published in The Kalahari Review, Praxis Magazine Online, Words, Rhyme& Rhythm and translated into film. His short stories have been published in Experimental Writing, Africa Vs Latin America Anthology, Volume 1 and other web-zines.
Arika Elizenberry is a native of Las Vegas, Nevada. She is a poet, editor, and short story writer. Some of her work can be found in Open Road Review, Toasted Cheese, and Neon Dreams. She holds an A.A. in Creative Writing and is working on her B.A. in English.
Barbara Foley is the Distinguished Professor, English and American Studies, at Rutgers University-Newark. She is a leading theorist, teacher and researcher on US literary radicalism, African American culture and Marxist criticism. She has written over 100 articles, book chapters and reviews, and has published 5 books; Jean Toomer: Race, Repression and Revolution, University of Illinois Press 2014; Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Durham: Duke University Press 2010; Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the Making of the New Negro, Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2003 (Paperback edition 2008); Radical Representations: Politics and Form in US Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941 Durham: Duke University Press 1993; Telling the Truth: The Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 1986.
Tanatsei Gambura is a young poet from Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, whose work explores the implications of African identity, African culture and womanhood. Both a writer and a performer, she revels in being both on and off stage. She has been a contributor in POVO Afrika's Women's Journal and Main Issue. Her earlier work was published in an anthology of collaborative pieces titled “Fresh Ink” that was compiled by Joseph Mahiya in 2015. In the same year, she was listed as one of Zimbabwe's fifteen teenagers "Who Will Shape The Nation With Or Without You". Tanatsei is currently working on her first chapbook.
Antonio Garcia is Currently a Visiting Scholar at New York University Center on International Cooperation, the author does research on international peacekeeping and future peace operations. A former senior officer in the South African Army, Antonio has served in two peace missions, in Darfur and in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as various regional deployments. Besides being a non-resident tutor at the University of South Africa and an Instructor at the University of the People, the author is a Chartered Geographer, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and certified Project Management Professional.
Lind Grant-Oyeye is a widely published writer of African descent
Tim Greenwood is a former British non-colonialist, who currently resides in Washington, DC. And categorically opposes the agenda of the incumbent administration!
My name is Alyestal Hamilton and I am a spoken word artist, speaker, and writer. I am Canadian born and raised, and of Jamaican decent. Although an emerging artist, I have made significant strides since I started my poetry career in 2013.
Sharon Hammond ran a rural investigative news agency where she trained grassroots journalists and covered corruption and development stories for twenty years. But then she gave it all up for poetry and parenthood. When she’s not travelling with her partner and young daughter, she lives happily in the Lowveld, South Africa, keeping cobras, monkeys and porcupines at bay. Her poems have been published in the South African journal The Big Issue, and Meat for Tea: The Valley Review in Massachusetts, in the US.
Tim Hall, age 75, grew up in a white working-class area near Cleveland, Ohio. Attended Cornell 1960-4, edited campus literary magazine. Went south in civil rights movement 1964-66, anti-war and anti-draft leader in Cleveland 1967, worked in factories since 1968, embraced anti-revisionist Marxism in 1969 (rejecting both Stalin and Trotsky). Active as auto worker, cab driver, postal worker until retirement in 2013. Founded and edited Struggle, a revolutionary literary magazine, in 1985 and until the present. Author of two collections of poetry, one of short stories, four plays, theoretical essays and one novel. Lives in Detroit, Michigan.
Duane L. Herrmann, is a survivor who lived to tell, a writer who exposes lies and a lover of the pure light of the moon - and trees! He is a contributor to anthologies: It’s About Living, Summer Shorts, Twisting Topeka, The Way We Were; recipient of: Ferguson Kansas History Book Award, Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship; included in: American Poets of the 1990s, Kansas Poets Trail, and Map of Kansas Literature. He has work published in print and online in U.S. and elsewhere, and spends time on the rolling prairie reflected in Prairies of Possibilities and Ichnographical: 173.
Allan Kolski Horwitz grew up in Cape Town. Between 1974-1985 he lived in the Middle East, Europe and North America, returning to live in Johannesburg in 1986. Since then he has worked in the trade unions and social housing movements. He continues to be a writer in various genres as well as being an educator and activist, he is a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry performance group and of the Botsotso publishing editorial board.
Barbara L. Howard was born in New Albany, Mississippi. She graduated from W. P. Daniel High School in 1987. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences and a Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction, both from the University of Mississippi. She earned a Specialist degree in Education from Middle Tennessee State University and a Doctorate degree in Education from Tennessee State University. She received some formal theological study at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Howard is currently a faculty member at Jackson State University. Dr. Barbara L. Howard is the author of Wounded Sheep: How to Heal Church Hurt and Wounded Sheep: How to Calm a Storm.
NURENI Ibrahim is an award-winning poet based in Lagos, Nigeria. He has published poems both in local and international magazines/journals. His poem “Half of a Human Species” featured in Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology. He renders poetry both in verse and in performance. He is also a fanatic lover of Haiku.
John Kaniecki resides in Montclair with his lovely wife Sylvia from Grenada for over twelve years. The couple attends the Church of Christ at Chancellor Avenue in Newark, NJ where they are both active members. John writes poetry and short stories. He has been published in over ninety outlets. John believes in the power of words to transform society for the better. As a poet John writes in all styles but particularly likes rhyming and traditional poetry. John has five poetry books, three fiction and his memoirs, “More Than The Madness”. His is the Poet To The Poor.
My name is Alvin Kathembe, I'm a 25-year-old writer from Nairobi, Kenya. More of my work can be found at wamathai.com, and I have stories published on storyzetu and Omenana.
Abdullahi Garba Lame is a young poet from Nigeria
Wanjohi wa Makokha (b.1979), is the sobriquet of Kenyan public intellectual JKS Makokha who is based at the Department of Literature and Institute of African Studies in Kenyatta University. Born in 1979 in Nairobi, raised in Eldoret and Bungoma, the poet has been shaped by various aspects of Kenyan cultures and environments. He obtained his elementary and secondary education from Muslim, Christian and Public schools. He holds tertiary papers from Kenyatta University, University of Leipzig and Free University of Berlin. This cross-cultural educational experience influences his vision and craft as an artist. The experience is sharpened by his private and public life that have seen him travel widely across Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, South Africa and Western Europe. He is the co-editor of several volumes of essays in literary criticism and theory such as: Reading Contemporary African Literatures: Critical Perspectives (Amsterdam/New York, 2013); Border-Crossings: Narrative and Demarcation in Postcolonial Literatures (Heidelberg, 2012); Style in African Literatures (Amsterdam, 2012), and East African Literatures (Berlin, 2011) among others. His poetry has been published in the Atonal Poetry Review, African Writing, The Journal of New Poetry, Postcolonial Text, Stylus Poetry Journal and Kwani? 7. Nest of Stones: Kenyan Narratives in Verse published by Langaa in 2010 is his debut book of verse. It revolves around the Kenya Election Crisis 2007-2008 and carries a foreword by the respected Kenyan poetess and scholar, Professor Micere Mugo.
Clarity R. Mapengo was born and raised in Mvuma, Zimbabwe. She is both a poet and a food scientist. Being a creative and adventurous mind, she believes that life has been, and continues to be a learning curve in all spectra. Exploring the endless possibilities in the food industry with the goal of contributing to food security in Africa is just but a fraction of her purpose. If not her science then may her poetic words improve lives. To live long after she is gone, that is her goal.
Sibusiso Ernest Masilela is a male poet born and bred in South Africa, he is a metaphysical poet who loves creative writing and spends most of his time reading and travelling. His latest appeared in New coin, New Contrast, Stanzas, Typecast and other anthologies…
Mikateko E. Mbambo is a qualified journalist and content producer by profession. She is an aspiring poet and novelist. She collects and enjoys African literary works. Apart from writing she is a pastel drawer and crafts woman. Mikateko has poems and stories Africa, is waiting to hear and read.
C. Liegh McInnis is an instructor of English at Jackson State University, the former publisher and editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts: Sketches and Tales of Urban Mississippi), one work of literary criticism (The Lyrics of Prince: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller), one co-authored work, Brother Hollis: The Sankofa of a Movement Man, which discusses the life of a legendary Mississippi Civil Rights icon, and the former First Runner-Up of the Amiri Baraka/Sonia Sanchez Poetry Award sponsored by North Carolina State A&T. He has presented papers at national conferences, such as College Language Association, the Neo-Griot Conference, and the Black Arts Movement Festival, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Southern Quarterly, Konch Magazine, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Down to the Dark River: An Anthology of Poems on the Mississippi River, Black Hollywood Unchained: Essays about Hollywood’s Portrayal of African Americans, Brick Street Press Anthology... In January of 2009, C. Liegh, along with eight other poets, was invited by the NAACP to read poetry in Washington, DC, for their Inaugural Poetry Reading celebrating the election of President Barack Obama. He has also been invited by colleges and libraries all over the country to read his poetry and fiction and to lecture on various topics, such as creative writing and various aspects of African American literature, music, and history. McInnis can be contacted through Psychedelic Literature, 203 Lynn Lane, Clinton, MS 39056, psychedeliclit@bellsouth.net. For more information, checkout his website www.psychedelicliterature.com
Ntensibe Joseph: I am a Ugandan living in the central capital of Uganda, Kampala. I am a teacher by profession and a graduate from Makerere University–Kampala. I have passion for writing especially poetry and some of my poems have appeared in some local anthologies and a few in the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology. I also ventures in a few films- these include short films like Breaking the Mesh that won national award for best short film.
Kariuki wa Nyamu is a gifted Kenyan poet, radio playwright, editor, translator, literary critic and educator. He attended Makerere University in Uganda, where he studied English, Literature and Education. His poetry won the National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU) Literary Awards 2007 and Makerere University Creative Writing Competition 2010. He has been anthologized in A Thousand Voices Rising, Boda Boda Anthem and Other Poems, Best New African Poets 2015 Anthology, Experimental Writing: Volume 1, Africa Vs Latin America Anthology, Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology, among others. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Literature at Kenyatta University, Kenya.
Eniola Olaosebikan is an active writer and a public speaker who currently shuffles between United Kingdom, United States and her home country Nigeria. She holds a master degree in International Business Management and asides writing and speaking, she works with specific organizations around the world to enable them realize their corporate goals.
Alexander Ernesto Khamala Namugugu Opicho was born in Bokoli village, Bungoma District, in the former Western province of Kenya. He went to primary and secondary schools in Western Kenya. He studied Accountancy, then governance and leadership at the University. He is currently pursuing a PhD course in management with a focus on the gender fluids as managers. He has published poetry and essays with Ghana poetry foundation, Kalahari Review, Babishai Poetry, Face2face Africa, BUWA issue 6, Lunaris review, Afridiaspora magazine, Awaaz Magazine, Nairobi Law Monthly, Nairobi Business Daily, BNAP 2015, Management Magazine, Transnational Journal of literature at Flinders University, The East African, the East African Standard and, Queer Africa Literary Association, African Voices, on the AfricanWriter.com. He has published online more than two hundred essays, several literary criticisms and over six hundred poems. His five books are with the publisher. He believes that the praxis of literature is the practice of freedom.
Liketso Ramafikeng is a poet and writer. Being shortlisted for a poetry anthology book tribute to Maya Angelou’s life and having her poem Woman of substance published in the book was a true mapping of how far she has come. She started writing in 2007 when she started High School. Because of her passion for writing and academic background she was given an internship at a local newspaper as a business reporter. When she is not playing with words, you will find her at projects aimed at community development. She is a graduate with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
Diane Raptosh’s fourth book of poetry, American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press) was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as Boise Poet Laureate (2013) and served as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016), the highest literary honor in the state. An active poetry ambassador, she has given poetry workshops everywhere from riverbanks to maximum-security prisons. She teaches creative writing and runs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at The College of Idaho. Her fifth poetry collection, Human Directional, was published by Etruscan Press in Fall 2016. Here you will find my TEDx Talk, “Poetry, Democracy, and the Hope of Sounds”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGAokimTzo0
Nancy Scott has been managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey, for more than a decade. She is the author of nine collections of poetry. Her work has been published in more than one hundred different journals and anthologies. She often writes about issues of social justice. www.nancyscott.net.
Abel Sehloho hails from a small village called Hebron in the North of Pretoria, South Africa. He is a blogger, journalist, photographer, poet and an aspiring scriptwriter. He has a Diploma in Journalism from Rosebank College and he is currently studying BA Creative Writing at the University of South Africa. He has written articles for a community newspaper and he has established his own blog which has been running successfully for over four years. He finished in the top 20 for the Young Film Project 2016. Recently, his poem “Mother Africa” has been included in the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology.
Paris Smith is from Chicago, Il., North America. Novelist, short story man. Numerous publications.
Archie Swanson is a 61 year old poet-surfer living in George, South Africa. His poems appear in English Alive 50 (an anthology of 50 years of South African high school writing), the 2014 and 2016 McGregor Poetry Festival Anthologies and in the 2015 and 2016 Best New African Poets Anthologies as well as the 2017 Volume 1 of Experimental Writing: Africa vs Latin America. His poems are also to be found in the prominent South African quarterly poetry magazines- New Contrast and Stanzas. Last year three of his poems were translated by Spanish poet Martín López-Vega and published in the Spanish newspaper, El Mundo. He was a guest poet at the Mcgregor Poetry Festival in 2016 and has been confirmed as guest poet again in August 2017.
Sheree Renée Thomas is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press, named on the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award “Worthy” List and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review) and Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems. She is the editor of the groundbreaking anthologies, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (winner of the 2001 World Fantasy Award) and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (winner of the 2005 World Fantasy Award). Her speculative stories and poems also appear in Apex Magazine, Harvard’s Transition, Smith’s Meridians, NYU’s Black Renaissance Noire, Callaloo, ESSENCE, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Revise the Psalm: Writers Celebrate the Work of Gwendolyn Brooks, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassiafiables, Jalada Afrofuture(s), Afrofuturo(s), Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, Inks Crawl, Memphis Noir, and the black women’s horror anthology, Sycorax’s Daughters. Her work has been translated in French, Urdu, and Spanish and her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times and other publications. Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Thomas is the Associate Editor of Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora.
Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet privileged to have read at the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium. He is Artistic Director of the stalwart JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge and has appeared at numerous festivals and venues including the Monterey Jazz Festival and Panafest in Ghana West Africa. He currently is Poet-in-Residence at Black Agenda Report. He is also a frequent contributor to Dissident Voice, and Struggle Magazine. Turner has opened for such people as James Baldwin, People’s Advocate Cynthia McKinney, radical sportswriter Dave Zirin and CA Congresswoman Barbara Lee following her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan.
Elizabeth Upshur is an African American Southern poet, translator, and memoirist. Her poetry has been published in regional journals such as Perceptions, Zephyrus, Lost River, and Red Mud Review. She has workshopped at the Frost Place, been awarded the Katherine Bakeless scholarship to attend the 2017 Bread Loaf Translators' Conference, and won the 2016 MLK, Jr., Essay Contest. She is a graduate student and freshman composition teacher at Western Kentucky University.
Roy Venketsamy is a poet and lecturer at University of Pretoria. His work has appeared in Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology. He is also an accomplished artist and he draws his inspiration from both nature and mankind. He has published poems with Poetry Institute for Africa, anthology entitled “ Murmuring Memoirs.” He has published in two other anthologies titled: Poetry for Haiti and Christian Anthology in which he published a religious poem.
Novelist, poet, and essayist Kenneth Weene says that the purpose of his writing is to open our collective eyes so we can see one another more clearly. Ken’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and his books are available worldwide on Amazon. You can learn more about Ken at http://www.kennethweene.com
Kanika Welch is a creative writer, teacher, career coach and budding entrepreneur. As a poet, she has released an album of her work available on Bandcamp and wowed audiences across the US with works centered largely around, womanhood, spirituality and black liberation. She has taught hundreds of students in various subject areas and has over 300 students enrolled in her online Udemy course. Currently, Kanika works as Teacher Trainer in the Gambia, West Africa providing hands-on coaching to increase literacy, improve student-centered learning and classroom management. To learn more visit www.kanikawelch.com
A.D. Winans is an award winning San Francisco poet and writer. He is the author of over 65 books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. He edited and published Second Coming Magazine/Press from 1972-1989. In 2010 BOS Press published a 368-page book of his selected poems: Drowning Like Li Po in a River of Red Wine. His poetry, fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in over 1500 literary journals, newspapers and anthologies, in 2006 he was awarded a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. In 2009 PEN Oakland presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was the recipient of a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing.
Yuan Changming, nine-time Pushcart and one-time Best of Net nominee, published monographs on translation before moving out of China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver; credits include Best of Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, New Coin, Rowayat, Threepenny Review and 1309 others across 39 countries.
CONTENTS
Part 1: Institutional Racism, Leadership and Governance
Allan Kolski Horwitz (South Africa): PRIMARY FACTS
Alvin Kathembe (Kenya): Exodus
Raymond Nat Turner (USA): Wars, Coming Home
Tim Hall (USA): The STRESS goes on...and on... and on...
Charlie R. Braxton (USA): Black Ops
Yugo Gabriel Egboluche (Nigeria): The Plague
Mbizo Chirasha (Zimbabwe): Sizobuya-We shall return
Sharon Hammond (South Africa): Granny drove over the ice-cream Boy! (after Rudyard Kipling)
Mbizo Chirasha (Zimbabwe): Banana republics
Kariuki wa Nyamu (Kenya): I want to be Nnalongo!
Raymond Nat Turner (USA): “…Look away, look away…”
Kariuki wa Nyamu (Kenya): Let’s start on at them
Wanjohi wa Makokha (Kenya): A TRUMP POSTCARD TO TRUMP
Duane L. Herrmann (USA): COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION
Wanjohi wa Makokha (Kenya): TATTOOS FOR THE MOTHERLAND
Frank De Canio (USA): A Jaundiced Perspective
Rogers Atukunda (Uganda): On footpath with long eye of history
Part 2: Slave Trade
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka (Zimbabwe): Vessels of dreams
Tiel Aisha Ansari (USA): Bagamoyo
Abdullahi Garba Lamè (Nigeria): NATIVES
Eniola Olaosebikan (Nigeria): Sun smiles to snows
Abel Sehloho (South Africa): Cracks of my skin
Charlie R. Braxton (USA): Declaración de la Libertad
Elizabeth Upshur (USA): An American Still Life
Eniola Olaosebikan (Nigeria): Head and hands
Karl W. Carter, Jr (USA): FOOT NOTES ON EQUALITY
NURENI Ibrahim (Nigeria): ANOTHER MAN DONE GONE
Karl W. Carter, Jr (USA): BLOOD-RHYTHM
NURENI Ibrahim (Nigeria): THE RHYTHM OF EPIPHANY
Rogers Atukunda (Uganda): Mama Millipede
Tim Greenwood (UK/USA): Below Stairs
Tim Hall (USA): Pledge of My Allegiance
Arika Elizenberry (USA): Decolonized
Duane L. Herrmann (USA): POEM FRUIT
Part 3: Nonfictions
Barbara Foley (USA): “A Dramatic Picture . . . of Woman from Feudalism to Fascism”:
Richard Wright’s Black Hope
Rogers Atukunda (Uganda): Unschooling the African to deschool society
Alexander Opicho (Kenya): Fallacy of the Divine Tongue than the Pen in Ngugi’s Rurimi Na Karamu
Biko Agozino (Nigeria): Free Merry Jay: A True Science Fiction
Part 4: Self Hatred
C. Liegh McInnis (USA): Blue Colored Glasses (for Pecola)
TANATSEI GAMBURA (Zimbabwe): Sophie
Sharon Hammond (South Africa): I asked God what he thought about guns
TANATSEI GAMBURA (Zimbabwe): The Conception of Tragedies
Tiel Aisha Ansari (USA): Dawn’s Café – Seligman
Part 5: Racism, Bigotry, Tribalism, and Tragedies
Barbara L. Howard (USA): Why Do You Hate Me?
Frank De Canio (USA): Guess Who Come Out the Winner? (or is it To Dinner)
John Kaniecki (USA): Graves on the Reservation
Frank De Canio (USA): NoBigotsAllowed (in the NBA)
John Kaniecki (USA): A Murder in Irvington
Tim Hall (USA): Yalobusha County
Alexander Opicho (Kenya): Racism Listen! Tribalism listen!
Arika Elizenberry (USA): Red Summer 1919
Nancy Scott (USA): Lost Boy of Sudan
Raymond Nat Turner (USA): The hyphen between African and Amerikan is Wyoming-wide
Tiel Aisha Ansari (USA): Mgeni
A.D Winans (USA): WHEN A BLACK BOY WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
NURENI Ibrahim (Nigeria): JIM CROW
Barbara L. Howard (USA): Blood in the Soil: A Tribute to the Gibbs/Green Tragedy, May 14, 1970
Arika Elizenberry (USA): The Molassacre
Part 6: Migrants, Irritants, Aliens and Assimilation
Wanjohi wa Makokha (Kenya): FROM EXILE TO INXILE
Yugo Gabriel Egboluche (Nigeria): Merchants
Alexander Opicho (Kenya): WE THE MIGRANTS
Kariuki wa Nyamu (Kenya): That song will surely trend!
Part 7: Fictions
Paris Smith (USA): COUNTRY CLUB
Kenneth Weene (USA): Black Lives and My White Privilege: Lessons from Childhood
Kanika Welch (USA): LOSING IKO
Antonio Garcia (South Africa): The Question
Sheree Renée Thomas (USA): The Grassdreaming Tree
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka (Zimbabwe): OLD MAN, DREAMS, WRITING
Part 8: Language, Identity, Colour and Colourism
Changming Yuan (Canada): Languacolonization
Sheree Renée Thomas (USA): The Tongue We Dream In
C. Liegh McInnis (USA): Is There a Difference Between Purple and Grape?
Sibusiso Ernest Masilela (South Africa): Heartbeat
Sheree Renée Thomas (USA): Return Song, or Why I Went South
Mbizo Chirasha (Zimbabwe): Anthem of the Black poet
Mikateko E. Mbambo (South Africa): Black
Diane Raptosh (USA): Family Tree
Katisha Burt (USA): Untitled
LIKETSO RAMAFIKENG (Lesotho): I AM HUMAN
John Kaniecki (USA): Africa
Mikateko E. Mbambo (South Africa): Return Afrika, Afrika Return
Elizabeth Upshur (USA): Haiku Series on Beloved
Karl W. Carter, Jr (USA): A SONG FOR LEROI JONES/AMIRI BARAKA
Part 9: Cultural Diversity, Transcontinental, Transactional, Meeting Spaces...
C. Liegh McInnis (USA): Black Man
Eniola Olaosebikan (Nigeria): Me
Barbara L. Howard (USA): Hope
Archie Swanson (South Africa): i’m off to Africa
Nancy Scott (USA): Lost Boy of Sudan in America
Ntensibe. Joseph (Uganda): IDENTITY LOST
Archie Swanson (South Africa): to the usa
Alyestal Hamilton (Canada): Before you Go
Ntensibe. Joseph (Uganda): STITCHED APERTURE
Alyestal Hamilton (Canada): For Kendrick
Roy Venketsamy (South Africa): MEMORIES
Charlie R. Braxton (USA): Of Water and Justice
Clarity R. Mapengo (Zimbabwe): Dear Africa
Diane Raptosh (USA): Dear Zygote
Clarity R. Mapengo (Zimbabwe): In these fissures
Diane Raptosh (USA): American Zebra: Praise Song for the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, Hagerman, Idaho
Katisha Burt (USA): Cliché’s
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka (Zimbabwe): Black boy, White girl
Katisha Burt (USA): My mess, my message
LIKETSO RAMAFIKENG (Lesotho): WE ARE YOUNG
Sharon Hammond (South Africa): The Impossibility of Let it Go
Changming Yuan (Canada): Asgardia: Second Choice
Lind Grant-Oyeye (Canada): Brothers at a distance
Changming Yuan (Canada): Some Day
Part 10: Play
Allan Kolski Horwitz (South Africa): BOOK MARKS
Introduction
When I was born, up until I was a grown up, all I knew about my skin, what to think of that skin came from inside me. I had earlier-on heard of how white Zimbabweans and the white government of Ian Smith had ill-treated the natives during colonial yoke. I saw the war of independence in Zimbabwe as a little boy. We became free from the colonial subjugating yoke. At Nyatate Secondary School I was taught by the white expatriate teachers from the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA. I have to frankly admit it, none of these made me feel like my skin was problematic. A lot of us native kids were friends with these expatriate teachers. We invited them to our rural homes; we would feed them our traditional foods. We were all very grateful for this connection. When I left for high school studies at Marist Nyanga, Zimbabwe’s best school, even as I write this introduction, I also had white teachers, and white brothers of the Marist order, and the relationship was great.
And then there was a white farm manager at this school, who ran the farm part of this institution. He would call us all sorts of degrading names or terms like monkey, baboon, k-word, n-word etc… We ignored him. But the crux of the situation came sooner than we thought it would. He stayed on our side of this institution; Marist Vale- the high school side, with two brothers, Brother George and Brother Mulroney, and the other brothers like brother Legualt who was the head of the whole institution was at the other side, the Marist brothers side that had the secondary school grades. So when we would go to see these two brothers, George and Mulroney, for spiritual guidance and religious matters, we would sometimes come into contact with this farm manager.
At one of these times, he told one of the students; when the student came to visit the brothers and found this farm manager eating his meal, that he doesn’t want to see blacks when eating as it makes him want to puke. When the student raised the issue to the other high school children at our night prayers and meeting, the whole student body decided to raise the issue with the headmaster. The headmaster said he will look into it, only to come back later to say he had raised it with the farm manager and the brothers, and he felt he had no way to solve it anymore. He said the farm manager was employed by the brothers not the school, that he had no control over him. He said the brothers were not keen on firing the manager as he was the best they ever had in terms of managing the farm. So the whole issue was hushed down. He continued with his racistic barbs at us.
We just internalized it and ignored him as we had been told to do by our headmaster. What that statement, “I don’t want to see blacks whilst I am eating…” meant to me, how violated I was for the first time, what it made me realize how so wrong my skin was. I was made to think it’s not just my skin; it’s everything inside me that was wrong, that was inferior. Over the years, I learned to internalize that feeling, to forget it, to live with it, to accept it.
I have heard stories of slavery. I have watched, only once so far, the movie 12 Years A Slave. I can’t re-watch it again. It’s horrible! I have heard stories of racism, stories of black killings like Rodney King and the resultant riots in California. I have heard of Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, Jesse Jackson, and many other black leaders. I have heard of those who were killed, maimed because of their skin colours in America like Ana Mae, Rosa Parks... I have read about Harriet Tubman Railroads. I have heard the noise around black lives matter, after another killing, and the reverse all lives matter etc, and you realise you don’t understand it beyond the vibes you hear from the media, some totally biased and cooked up, so I felt I didn’t know enough. I have toyed around the idea of writing a book during black lives matter movement but still felt I didn’t know enough. I know in some countries racism has whittled down, has transmuted into other forms like bigotry, institutional racism etc…
And as far back, I know the African continent has been riddled with poverty, tribal wars, killings, bad governance, and civil wars. I have explored that in other works but I felt there is a connection between all these African troubles with the broader issue of racism. So I decided to open the platform for writers to investigate all these issues, with the intention of mapping the way forward, finding areas to meet, transacting together. Here is the call I send out:
Africanization and Americanization: Searching for Inter-racial, Interstitial, Inter-sectional, and Interstates meeting spaces, Africa Vs North America, Volume 1
These two continents were under the colonial hammer that changed them completely. They went through the worst recorded cases of slave trade, human trafficking, sexual abuses, racial abuses, genocides…. They have several races, tribes and groups in each, which they also share between each other, that has been the site of tensions. As we find our feet in the 21st century a lot of us have become colour blind, have grown beyond sections, even states and this anthology is invaluable as it would try to dissect where we came from (pre-colonial, colonial, postcolonial, post racial etc), where we are now, where we want to head toward, especially the meeting points between or among the racial lines, sectional lines, states lines in trying to find spaces we have built or want to built among ourselves (in each of the continents, or between the countries in these continents, or between these two continents) as we move into the future. I am looking for writing that delves or tackles these issues in any genre, any topic, any style.... Sent me your best essays, literary fictions, non-fictions, plays, poetry, mixed genres etc, in English language(s) (or English translations). Sent work in only one genre of your choice!
Poetry (3 poems per poet, preferably short poems but I am still open for long poems)
Prose, plays and mixed genres (I piece per writer, of not more than 5000 words)
Work must be sent in only one attached document, also include your contact details in this document, i.e., Postal address, Tel no, Email address and a bio note of not more than 100 words.
Please sent your entries to Tendai R. Mwanaka at mwanaka13@gmail.com
Closing date for entries is 30 June 2017
No free contributors’ copies, no royalties but contributors will benefit immensely through publicity into both continents and worldwide.
Please adhere to submission guidelines!!
I am grateful I received a lot of entries around the issues outlined in the introduction and the call for work above. I read everything and chose the best entries I thought tried to frankly investigate these issues. The anthology comprises 107 pieces from 43 poets, 4 essayists, 6 storytellers, 1 playwright. It is arranged into 10 topical groups that would give a reader a rough sense of what the writings in each group are about. We have work from distinguished professors, leading theorists, researchers, academic poets, essayists, street poets, academicians, journalists, musicians, and visual people. The collection is vibrant, discursive, penetrating, and genuinely searches for solutions. It is invaluable to literary theorists, poetry collectors, language experts, social scientists, political theorists, race theorist, development practioners, students, human scientist etc…
Africanization and Americanization: Searching for Inter-racial, Interstitial, Inter-sectional, and Interstates meeting spaces, Africa Vs North America, Volume 1
*
Edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka is an editor, writer, visual artist and musical artist with 10 individual books published and 5 edited anthologies which include among others, Zimbolicious Poetry Anthology, Playing To Love’s Gallery, Counting The Stars, and many more here http://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/tendai-rinos-mwanaka. He writes in English and Shona. His work has appeared in over 400 journals and anthologies from over 27 countries. Work has been translated into Spanish, French and Germany.
Contributor’s Bio Notes
Tiel Aisha Ansari is a Sufi warrior poet. Her work has been featured by Fault Lines Poetry, Windfall, KBOO and Prairie Home Companion among others. Her books include Knocking from Inside and High-Voltage Lines. She works as a data analyst for the Portland Public School district and currently serves as president of the Oregon Poetry Association. Visit her online at knockingfrominside.blogspot.com
Rogers Atukunda is a Ugandan journalist, filmmaker, writer, researcher and educator. He studied English, Literature and Film at Makerere University, Kampala. Rogers is an upstart writer. He is a published poet and short story writer. His poem Delilah appeared in A Thousand Voices Rising, An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry. His short story Daniela was published in An Anthology of contemporary short stories and poems from East Africa. He has also written a critical paper titled: Swallowing a bitter pill; the subtext in Kihura Nkuba’s When the African Wakes (still unpublished). He was published in the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology.
Biko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Editor-In-Chief of the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies and author of Black Women and the Criminal Justice System: Towards the Decolonization of Victimization (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997) and also of Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason (London, Pluto Press, 2003).
Charlie R. Braxton is a poet, playwright and essayists from McComb, Mississippi. He is the author of two volumes of verse, Ascension from the Ashes (Blackwood Press 1991) and Cinder’s Rekindled (Jawara Press 2013). His poetry has been published in various literary publications such as African American Review, The Minnesota Review, The Black Nation, Massiffe, Candle, Transnational Literary Magazine, Eyeball, Sepia Poetry Review, Specter Magazine and The San Fernando Poetry Journal.
Katisha Burt is an Albany, NY native. She is an actor, self-published poet and educator. Katisha has self-published several works of fiction and poetry, as well as being published in several anthologies and poetry magazines. Her greatest passion, outside of teaching Middle Schoolers, is composing and producing poetry.
Frank De Canio: Born & bred in New Jersey, I work in New York. I love music from Bach to Amy Winehouse. Shakespeare is my consolation, writing my hobby. I like Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath as poets and host a philosophy workshop in lower Manhattan
Karl W. Carter, Jr. resides in Alexandria, Va. His poetry appears in numerous anthologies and Poetry Reviews/Quarterlies including: Three Poems (Broadside Press, 1972). Understanding the New Black Poetry (William Morrow, 1973); Synergy D.C. Anthology (Energy Black South Press, 1978); The Poet Upstairs: (1979); Drum Voices Review: Chicken Bones- A Journal 2005; Drum Voices Review 2012; Words of Protest, Words of Freedom, (2012). Delaware Poetry Review (2013); Beltway Poetry Quarterly.(2014); Broadkill Review Vol.8 No.4 (2014); Beltway Poetry Quarterly Best of the Net Nominee #3 (2014); Poet Lore Vol. 109, No. 3/4 (2014); About Place Journal, Vol.II, Issue IV (2014); Poetry Pacific, Spring Issue (5/5/2015); Journal of Hip Hop Studies Vol.3., Issue-1(2016). Delaware Poetry Review Volume 8 No.1(2017). He has also published a book of Poetry Southern Road and Selected Poems (2014)
Mbizo Chirasha is an acclaimed wordsmith, performances poet, widely published poet and writer. He is the Founder and Creative Director of several creative initiatives and projects, including Young writers Caravan Project, This is Africa Poetry Night 2006 – 2008, Zimbabwe Amateur Poetry conference 2007 – 2010, African Drums Poetry Festival 2007, GirlChildCreativity Project 2011- Current, GirlchildTalent Festival 2012. The widely traveled poet and creative projects consultant is published in more than 60 journals, anthologies, websites, reviews, newspapers, blogs and poetry collections around the world. Some of the countries he traveled to include Ghana, Sweden, Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Malawi. He co-authored Whispering woes of Ganges and Zambezi with Sweta Vikram from New York in 2010. His poetry collection Good Morning President was published by Diaspora publishers UK in 2011.
Yugo Gabriel Egboluche is a graduate of Geography from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He writes from Anambra State where he works as a Development Practitioner. Together with poetry, he does fiction, script-writing and copy-writing. His works have been published in The Kalahari Review, Praxis Magazine Online, Words, Rhyme& Rhythm and translated into film. His short stories have been published in Experimental Writing, Africa Vs Latin America Anthology, Volume 1 and other web-zines.
Arika Elizenberry is a native of Las Vegas, Nevada. She is a poet, editor, and short story writer. Some of her work can be found in Open Road Review, Toasted Cheese, and Neon Dreams. She holds an A.A. in Creative Writing and is working on her B.A. in English.
Barbara Foley is the Distinguished Professor, English and American Studies, at Rutgers University-Newark. She is a leading theorist, teacher and researcher on US literary radicalism, African American culture and Marxist criticism. She has written over 100 articles, book chapters and reviews, and has published 5 books; Jean Toomer: Race, Repression and Revolution, University of Illinois Press 2014; Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Durham: Duke University Press 2010; Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the Making of the New Negro, Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2003 (Paperback edition 2008); Radical Representations: Politics and Form in US Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941 Durham: Duke University Press 1993; Telling the Truth: The Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 1986.
Tanatsei Gambura is a young poet from Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, whose work explores the implications of African identity, African culture and womanhood. Both a writer and a performer, she revels in being both on and off stage. She has been a contributor in POVO Afrika's Women's Journal and Main Issue. Her earlier work was published in an anthology of collaborative pieces titled “Fresh Ink” that was compiled by Joseph Mahiya in 2015. In the same year, she was listed as one of Zimbabwe's fifteen teenagers "Who Will Shape The Nation With Or Without You". Tanatsei is currently working on her first chapbook.
Antonio Garcia is Currently a Visiting Scholar at New York University Center on International Cooperation, the author does research on international peacekeeping and future peace operations. A former senior officer in the South African Army, Antonio has served in two peace missions, in Darfur and in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as various regional deployments. Besides being a non-resident tutor at the University of South Africa and an Instructor at the University of the People, the author is a Chartered Geographer, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and certified Project Management Professional.
Lind Grant-Oyeye is a widely published writer of African descent
Tim Greenwood is a former British non-colonialist, who currently resides in Washington, DC. And categorically opposes the agenda of the incumbent administration!
My name is Alyestal Hamilton and I am a spoken word artist, speaker, and writer. I am Canadian born and raised, and of Jamaican decent. Although an emerging artist, I have made significant strides since I started my poetry career in 2013.
Sharon Hammond ran a rural investigative news agency where she trained grassroots journalists and covered corruption and development stories for twenty years. But then she gave it all up for poetry and parenthood. When she’s not travelling with her partner and young daughter, she lives happily in the Lowveld, South Africa, keeping cobras, monkeys and porcupines at bay. Her poems have been published in the South African journal The Big Issue, and Meat for Tea: The Valley Review in Massachusetts, in the US.
Tim Hall, age 75, grew up in a white working-class area near Cleveland, Ohio. Attended Cornell 1960-4, edited campus literary magazine. Went south in civil rights movement 1964-66, anti-war and anti-draft leader in Cleveland 1967, worked in factories since 1968, embraced anti-revisionist Marxism in 1969 (rejecting both Stalin and Trotsky). Active as auto worker, cab driver, postal worker until retirement in 2013. Founded and edited Struggle, a revolutionary literary magazine, in 1985 and until the present. Author of two collections of poetry, one of short stories, four plays, theoretical essays and one novel. Lives in Detroit, Michigan.
Duane L. Herrmann, is a survivor who lived to tell, a writer who exposes lies and a lover of the pure light of the moon - and trees! He is a contributor to anthologies: It’s About Living, Summer Shorts, Twisting Topeka, The Way We Were; recipient of: Ferguson Kansas History Book Award, Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship; included in: American Poets of the 1990s, Kansas Poets Trail, and Map of Kansas Literature. He has work published in print and online in U.S. and elsewhere, and spends time on the rolling prairie reflected in Prairies of Possibilities and Ichnographical: 173.
Allan Kolski Horwitz grew up in Cape Town. Between 1974-1985 he lived in the Middle East, Europe and North America, returning to live in Johannesburg in 1986. Since then he has worked in the trade unions and social housing movements. He continues to be a writer in various genres as well as being an educator and activist, he is a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry performance group and of the Botsotso publishing editorial board.
Barbara L. Howard was born in New Albany, Mississippi. She graduated from W. P. Daniel High School in 1987. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences and a Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction, both from the University of Mississippi. She earned a Specialist degree in Education from Middle Tennessee State University and a Doctorate degree in Education from Tennessee State University. She received some formal theological study at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Howard is currently a faculty member at Jackson State University. Dr. Barbara L. Howard is the author of Wounded Sheep: How to Heal Church Hurt and Wounded Sheep: How to Calm a Storm.
NURENI Ibrahim is an award-winning poet based in Lagos, Nigeria. He has published poems both in local and international magazines/journals. His poem “Half of a Human Species” featured in Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology. He renders poetry both in verse and in performance. He is also a fanatic lover of Haiku.
John Kaniecki resides in Montclair with his lovely wife Sylvia from Grenada for over twelve years. The couple attends the Church of Christ at Chancellor Avenue in Newark, NJ where they are both active members. John writes poetry and short stories. He has been published in over ninety outlets. John believes in the power of words to transform society for the better. As a poet John writes in all styles but particularly likes rhyming and traditional poetry. John has five poetry books, three fiction and his memoirs, “More Than The Madness”. His is the Poet To The Poor.
My name is Alvin Kathembe, I'm a 25-year-old writer from Nairobi, Kenya. More of my work can be found at wamathai.com, and I have stories published on storyzetu and Omenana.
Abdullahi Garba Lame is a young poet from Nigeria
Wanjohi wa Makokha (b.1979), is the sobriquet of Kenyan public intellectual JKS Makokha who is based at the Department of Literature and Institute of African Studies in Kenyatta University. Born in 1979 in Nairobi, raised in Eldoret and Bungoma, the poet has been shaped by various aspects of Kenyan cultures and environments. He obtained his elementary and secondary education from Muslim, Christian and Public schools. He holds tertiary papers from Kenyatta University, University of Leipzig and Free University of Berlin. This cross-cultural educational experience influences his vision and craft as an artist. The experience is sharpened by his private and public life that have seen him travel widely across Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, South Africa and Western Europe. He is the co-editor of several volumes of essays in literary criticism and theory such as: Reading Contemporary African Literatures: Critical Perspectives (Amsterdam/New York, 2013); Border-Crossings: Narrative and Demarcation in Postcolonial Literatures (Heidelberg, 2012); Style in African Literatures (Amsterdam, 2012), and East African Literatures (Berlin, 2011) among others. His poetry has been published in the Atonal Poetry Review, African Writing, The Journal of New Poetry, Postcolonial Text, Stylus Poetry Journal and Kwani? 7. Nest of Stones: Kenyan Narratives in Verse published by Langaa in 2010 is his debut book of verse. It revolves around the Kenya Election Crisis 2007-2008 and carries a foreword by the respected Kenyan poetess and scholar, Professor Micere Mugo.
Clarity R. Mapengo was born and raised in Mvuma, Zimbabwe. She is both a poet and a food scientist. Being a creative and adventurous mind, she believes that life has been, and continues to be a learning curve in all spectra. Exploring the endless possibilities in the food industry with the goal of contributing to food security in Africa is just but a fraction of her purpose. If not her science then may her poetic words improve lives. To live long after she is gone, that is her goal.
Sibusiso Ernest Masilela is a male poet born and bred in South Africa, he is a metaphysical poet who loves creative writing and spends most of his time reading and travelling. His latest appeared in New coin, New Contrast, Stanzas, Typecast and other anthologies…
Mikateko E. Mbambo is a qualified journalist and content producer by profession. She is an aspiring poet and novelist. She collects and enjoys African literary works. Apart from writing she is a pastel drawer and crafts woman. Mikateko has poems and stories Africa, is waiting to hear and read.
C. Liegh McInnis is an instructor of English at Jackson State University, the former publisher and editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts: Sketches and Tales of Urban Mississippi), one work of literary criticism (The Lyrics of Prince: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller), one co-authored work, Brother Hollis: The Sankofa of a Movement Man, which discusses the life of a legendary Mississippi Civil Rights icon, and the former First Runner-Up of the Amiri Baraka/Sonia Sanchez Poetry Award sponsored by North Carolina State A&T. He has presented papers at national conferences, such as College Language Association, the Neo-Griot Conference, and the Black Arts Movement Festival, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Southern Quarterly, Konch Magazine, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Down to the Dark River: An Anthology of Poems on the Mississippi River, Black Hollywood Unchained: Essays about Hollywood’s Portrayal of African Americans, Brick Street Press Anthology... In January of 2009, C. Liegh, along with eight other poets, was invited by the NAACP to read poetry in Washington, DC, for their Inaugural Poetry Reading celebrating the election of President Barack Obama. He has also been invited by colleges and libraries all over the country to read his poetry and fiction and to lecture on various topics, such as creative writing and various aspects of African American literature, music, and history. McInnis can be contacted through Psychedelic Literature, 203 Lynn Lane, Clinton, MS 39056, psychedeliclit@bellsouth.net. For more information, checkout his website www.psychedelicliterature.com
Ntensibe Joseph: I am a Ugandan living in the central capital of Uganda, Kampala. I am a teacher by profession and a graduate from Makerere University–Kampala. I have passion for writing especially poetry and some of my poems have appeared in some local anthologies and a few in the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology. I also ventures in a few films- these include short films like Breaking the Mesh that won national award for best short film.
Kariuki wa Nyamu is a gifted Kenyan poet, radio playwright, editor, translator, literary critic and educator. He attended Makerere University in Uganda, where he studied English, Literature and Education. His poetry won the National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU) Literary Awards 2007 and Makerere University Creative Writing Competition 2010. He has been anthologized in A Thousand Voices Rising, Boda Boda Anthem and Other Poems, Best New African Poets 2015 Anthology, Experimental Writing: Volume 1, Africa Vs Latin America Anthology, Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology, among others. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Literature at Kenyatta University, Kenya.
Eniola Olaosebikan is an active writer and a public speaker who currently shuffles between United Kingdom, United States and her home country Nigeria. She holds a master degree in International Business Management and asides writing and speaking, she works with specific organizations around the world to enable them realize their corporate goals.
Alexander Ernesto Khamala Namugugu Opicho was born in Bokoli village, Bungoma District, in the former Western province of Kenya. He went to primary and secondary schools in Western Kenya. He studied Accountancy, then governance and leadership at the University. He is currently pursuing a PhD course in management with a focus on the gender fluids as managers. He has published poetry and essays with Ghana poetry foundation, Kalahari Review, Babishai Poetry, Face2face Africa, BUWA issue 6, Lunaris review, Afridiaspora magazine, Awaaz Magazine, Nairobi Law Monthly, Nairobi Business Daily, BNAP 2015, Management Magazine, Transnational Journal of literature at Flinders University, The East African, the East African Standard and, Queer Africa Literary Association, African Voices, on the AfricanWriter.com. He has published online more than two hundred essays, several literary criticisms and over six hundred poems. His five books are with the publisher. He believes that the praxis of literature is the practice of freedom.
Liketso Ramafikeng is a poet and writer. Being shortlisted for a poetry anthology book tribute to Maya Angelou’s life and having her poem Woman of substance published in the book was a true mapping of how far she has come. She started writing in 2007 when she started High School. Because of her passion for writing and academic background she was given an internship at a local newspaper as a business reporter. When she is not playing with words, you will find her at projects aimed at community development. She is a graduate with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
Diane Raptosh’s fourth book of poetry, American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press) was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as Boise Poet Laureate (2013) and served as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016), the highest literary honor in the state. An active poetry ambassador, she has given poetry workshops everywhere from riverbanks to maximum-security prisons. She teaches creative writing and runs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at The College of Idaho. Her fifth poetry collection, Human Directional, was published by Etruscan Press in Fall 2016. Here you will find my TEDx Talk, “Poetry, Democracy, and the Hope of Sounds”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGAokimTzo0
Nancy Scott has been managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey, for more than a decade. She is the author of nine collections of poetry. Her work has been published in more than one hundred different journals and anthologies. She often writes about issues of social justice. www.nancyscott.net.
Abel Sehloho hails from a small village called Hebron in the North of Pretoria, South Africa. He is a blogger, journalist, photographer, poet and an aspiring scriptwriter. He has a Diploma in Journalism from Rosebank College and he is currently studying BA Creative Writing at the University of South Africa. He has written articles for a community newspaper and he has established his own blog which has been running successfully for over four years. He finished in the top 20 for the Young Film Project 2016. Recently, his poem “Mother Africa” has been included in the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology.
Paris Smith is from Chicago, Il., North America. Novelist, short story man. Numerous publications.
Archie Swanson is a 61 year old poet-surfer living in George, South Africa. His poems appear in English Alive 50 (an anthology of 50 years of South African high school writing), the 2014 and 2016 McGregor Poetry Festival Anthologies and in the 2015 and 2016 Best New African Poets Anthologies as well as the 2017 Volume 1 of Experimental Writing: Africa vs Latin America. His poems are also to be found in the prominent South African quarterly poetry magazines- New Contrast and Stanzas. Last year three of his poems were translated by Spanish poet Martín López-Vega and published in the Spanish newspaper, El Mundo. He was a guest poet at the Mcgregor Poetry Festival in 2016 and has been confirmed as guest poet again in August 2017.
Sheree Renée Thomas is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press, named on the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award “Worthy” List and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review) and Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems. She is the editor of the groundbreaking anthologies, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (winner of the 2001 World Fantasy Award) and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (winner of the 2005 World Fantasy Award). Her speculative stories and poems also appear in Apex Magazine, Harvard’s Transition, Smith’s Meridians, NYU’s Black Renaissance Noire, Callaloo, ESSENCE, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Revise the Psalm: Writers Celebrate the Work of Gwendolyn Brooks, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassiafiables, Jalada Afrofuture(s), Afrofuturo(s), Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, Inks Crawl, Memphis Noir, and the black women’s horror anthology, Sycorax’s Daughters. Her work has been translated in French, Urdu, and Spanish and her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times and other publications. Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Thomas is the Associate Editor of Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora.
Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet privileged to have read at the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium. He is Artistic Director of the stalwart JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge and has appeared at numerous festivals and venues including the Monterey Jazz Festival and Panafest in Ghana West Africa. He currently is Poet-in-Residence at Black Agenda Report. He is also a frequent contributor to Dissident Voice, and Struggle Magazine. Turner has opened for such people as James Baldwin, People’s Advocate Cynthia McKinney, radical sportswriter Dave Zirin and CA Congresswoman Barbara Lee following her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan.
Elizabeth Upshur is an African American Southern poet, translator, and memoirist. Her poetry has been published in regional journals such as Perceptions, Zephyrus, Lost River, and Red Mud Review. She has workshopped at the Frost Place, been awarded the Katherine Bakeless scholarship to attend the 2017 Bread Loaf Translators' Conference, and won the 2016 MLK, Jr., Essay Contest. She is a graduate student and freshman composition teacher at Western Kentucky University.
Roy Venketsamy is a poet and lecturer at University of Pretoria. His work has appeared in Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology. He is also an accomplished artist and he draws his inspiration from both nature and mankind. He has published poems with Poetry Institute for Africa, anthology entitled “ Murmuring Memoirs.” He has published in two other anthologies titled: Poetry for Haiti and Christian Anthology in which he published a religious poem.
Novelist, poet, and essayist Kenneth Weene says that the purpose of his writing is to open our collective eyes so we can see one another more clearly. Ken’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and his books are available worldwide on Amazon. You can learn more about Ken at http://www.kennethweene.com
Kanika Welch is a creative writer, teacher, career coach and budding entrepreneur. As a poet, she has released an album of her work available on Bandcamp and wowed audiences across the US with works centered largely around, womanhood, spirituality and black liberation. She has taught hundreds of students in various subject areas and has over 300 students enrolled in her online Udemy course. Currently, Kanika works as Teacher Trainer in the Gambia, West Africa providing hands-on coaching to increase literacy, improve student-centered learning and classroom management. To learn more visit www.kanikawelch.com
A.D. Winans is an award winning San Francisco poet and writer. He is the author of over 65 books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. He edited and published Second Coming Magazine/Press from 1972-1989. In 2010 BOS Press published a 368-page book of his selected poems: Drowning Like Li Po in a River of Red Wine. His poetry, fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in over 1500 literary journals, newspapers and anthologies, in 2006 he was awarded a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. In 2009 PEN Oakland presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was the recipient of a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing.
Yuan Changming, nine-time Pushcart and one-time Best of Net nominee, published monographs on translation before moving out of China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver; credits include Best of Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, New Coin, Rowayat, Threepenny Review and 1309 others across 39 countries.
CONTENTS
Part 1: Institutional Racism, Leadership and Governance
Allan Kolski Horwitz (South Africa): PRIMARY FACTS
Alvin Kathembe (Kenya): Exodus
Raymond Nat Turner (USA): Wars, Coming Home
Tim Hall (USA): The STRESS goes on...and on... and on...
Charlie R. Braxton (USA): Black Ops
Yugo Gabriel Egboluche (Nigeria): The Plague
Mbizo Chirasha (Zimbabwe): Sizobuya-We shall return
Sharon Hammond (South Africa): Granny drove over the ice-cream Boy! (after Rudyard Kipling)
Mbizo Chirasha (Zimbabwe): Banana republics
Kariuki wa Nyamu (Kenya): I want to be Nnalongo!
Raymond Nat Turner (USA): “…Look away, look away…”
Kariuki wa Nyamu (Kenya): Let’s start on at them
Wanjohi wa Makokha (Kenya): A TRUMP POSTCARD TO TRUMP
Duane L. Herrmann (USA): COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION
Wanjohi wa Makokha (Kenya): TATTOOS FOR THE MOTHERLAND
Frank De Canio (USA): A Jaundiced Perspective
Rogers Atukunda (Uganda): On footpath with long eye of history
Part 2: Slave Trade
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka (Zimbabwe): Vessels of dreams
Tiel Aisha Ansari (USA): Bagamoyo
Abdullahi Garba Lamè (Nigeria): NATIVES
Eniola Olaosebikan (Nigeria): Sun smiles to snows
Abel Sehloho (South Africa): Cracks of my skin
Charlie R. Braxton (USA): Declaración de la Libertad
Elizabeth Upshur (USA): An American Still Life
Eniola Olaosebikan (Nigeria): Head and hands
Karl W. Carter, Jr (USA): FOOT NOTES ON EQUALITY
NURENI Ibrahim (Nigeria): ANOTHER MAN DONE GONE
Karl W. Carter, Jr (USA): BLOOD-RHYTHM
NURENI Ibrahim (Nigeria): THE RHYTHM OF EPIPHANY
Rogers Atukunda (Uganda): Mama Millipede
Tim Greenwood (UK/USA): Below Stairs
Tim Hall (USA): Pledge of My Allegiance
Arika Elizenberry (USA): Decolonized
Duane L. Herrmann (USA): POEM FRUIT
Part 3: Nonfictions
Barbara Foley (USA): “A Dramatic Picture . . . of Woman from Feudalism to Fascism”:
Richard Wright’s Black Hope
Rogers Atukunda (Uganda): Unschooling the African to deschool society
Alexander Opicho (Kenya): Fallacy of the Divine Tongue than the Pen in Ngugi’s Rurimi Na Karamu
Biko Agozino (Nigeria): Free Merry Jay: A True Science Fiction
Part 4: Self Hatred
C. Liegh McInnis (USA): Blue Colored Glasses (for Pecola)
TANATSEI GAMBURA (Zimbabwe): Sophie
Sharon Hammond (South Africa): I asked God what he thought about guns
TANATSEI GAMBURA (Zimbabwe): The Conception of Tragedies
Tiel Aisha Ansari (USA): Dawn’s Café – Seligman
Part 5: Racism, Bigotry, Tribalism, and Tragedies
Barbara L. Howard (USA): Why Do You Hate Me?
Frank De Canio (USA): Guess Who Come Out the Winner? (or is it To Dinner)
John Kaniecki (USA): Graves on the Reservation
Frank De Canio (USA): NoBigotsAllowed (in the NBA)
John Kaniecki (USA): A Murder in Irvington
Tim Hall (USA): Yalobusha County
Alexander Opicho (Kenya): Racism Listen! Tribalism listen!
Arika Elizenberry (USA): Red Summer 1919
Nancy Scott (USA): Lost Boy of Sudan
Raymond Nat Turner (USA): The hyphen between African and Amerikan is Wyoming-wide
Tiel Aisha Ansari (USA): Mgeni
A.D Winans (USA): WHEN A BLACK BOY WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
NURENI Ibrahim (Nigeria): JIM CROW
Barbara L. Howard (USA): Blood in the Soil: A Tribute to the Gibbs/Green Tragedy, May 14, 1970
Arika Elizenberry (USA): The Molassacre
Part 6: Migrants, Irritants, Aliens and Assimilation
Wanjohi wa Makokha (Kenya): FROM EXILE TO INXILE
Yugo Gabriel Egboluche (Nigeria): Merchants
Alexander Opicho (Kenya): WE THE MIGRANTS
Kariuki wa Nyamu (Kenya): That song will surely trend!
Part 7: Fictions
Paris Smith (USA): COUNTRY CLUB
Kenneth Weene (USA): Black Lives and My White Privilege: Lessons from Childhood
Kanika Welch (USA): LOSING IKO
Antonio Garcia (South Africa): The Question
Sheree Renée Thomas (USA): The Grassdreaming Tree
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka (Zimbabwe): OLD MAN, DREAMS, WRITING
Part 8: Language, Identity, Colour and Colourism
Changming Yuan (Canada): Languacolonization
Sheree Renée Thomas (USA): The Tongue We Dream In
C. Liegh McInnis (USA): Is There a Difference Between Purple and Grape?
Sibusiso Ernest Masilela (South Africa): Heartbeat
Sheree Renée Thomas (USA): Return Song, or Why I Went South
Mbizo Chirasha (Zimbabwe): Anthem of the Black poet
Mikateko E. Mbambo (South Africa): Black
Diane Raptosh (USA): Family Tree
Katisha Burt (USA): Untitled
LIKETSO RAMAFIKENG (Lesotho): I AM HUMAN
John Kaniecki (USA): Africa
Mikateko E. Mbambo (South Africa): Return Afrika, Afrika Return
Elizabeth Upshur (USA): Haiku Series on Beloved
Karl W. Carter, Jr (USA): A SONG FOR LEROI JONES/AMIRI BARAKA
Part 9: Cultural Diversity, Transcontinental, Transactional, Meeting Spaces...
C. Liegh McInnis (USA): Black Man
Eniola Olaosebikan (Nigeria): Me
Barbara L. Howard (USA): Hope
Archie Swanson (South Africa): i’m off to Africa
Nancy Scott (USA): Lost Boy of Sudan in America
Ntensibe. Joseph (Uganda): IDENTITY LOST
Archie Swanson (South Africa): to the usa
Alyestal Hamilton (Canada): Before you Go
Ntensibe. Joseph (Uganda): STITCHED APERTURE
Alyestal Hamilton (Canada): For Kendrick
Roy Venketsamy (South Africa): MEMORIES
Charlie R. Braxton (USA): Of Water and Justice
Clarity R. Mapengo (Zimbabwe): Dear Africa
Diane Raptosh (USA): Dear Zygote
Clarity R. Mapengo (Zimbabwe): In these fissures
Diane Raptosh (USA): American Zebra: Praise Song for the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, Hagerman, Idaho
Katisha Burt (USA): Cliché’s
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka (Zimbabwe): Black boy, White girl
Katisha Burt (USA): My mess, my message
LIKETSO RAMAFIKENG (Lesotho): WE ARE YOUNG
Sharon Hammond (South Africa): The Impossibility of Let it Go
Changming Yuan (Canada): Asgardia: Second Choice
Lind Grant-Oyeye (Canada): Brothers at a distance
Changming Yuan (Canada): Some Day
Part 10: Play
Allan Kolski Horwitz (South Africa): BOOK MARKS
Introduction
When I was born, up until I was a grown up, all I knew about my skin, what to think of that skin came from inside me. I had earlier-on heard of how white Zimbabweans and the white government of Ian Smith had ill-treated the natives during colonial yoke. I saw the war of independence in Zimbabwe as a little boy. We became free from the colonial subjugating yoke. At Nyatate Secondary School I was taught by the white expatriate teachers from the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA. I have to frankly admit it, none of these made me feel like my skin was problematic. A lot of us native kids were friends with these expatriate teachers. We invited them to our rural homes; we would feed them our traditional foods. We were all very grateful for this connection. When I left for high school studies at Marist Nyanga, Zimbabwe’s best school, even as I write this introduction, I also had white teachers, and white brothers of the Marist order, and the relationship was great.
And then there was a white farm manager at this school, who ran the farm part of this institution. He would call us all sorts of degrading names or terms like monkey, baboon, k-word, n-word etc… We ignored him. But the crux of the situation came sooner than we thought it would. He stayed on our side of this institution; Marist Vale- the high school side, with two brothers, Brother George and Brother Mulroney, and the other brothers like brother Legualt who was the head of the whole institution was at the other side, the Marist brothers side that had the secondary school grades. So when we would go to see these two brothers, George and Mulroney, for spiritual guidance and religious matters, we would sometimes come into contact with this farm manager.
At one of these times, he told one of the students; when the student came to visit the brothers and found this farm manager eating his meal, that he doesn’t want to see blacks when eating as it makes him want to puke. When the student raised the issue to the other high school children at our night prayers and meeting, the whole student body decided to raise the issue with the headmaster. The headmaster said he will look into it, only to come back later to say he had raised it with the farm manager and the brothers, and he felt he had no way to solve it anymore. He said the farm manager was employed by the brothers not the school, that he had no control over him. He said the brothers were not keen on firing the manager as he was the best they ever had in terms of managing the farm. So the whole issue was hushed down. He continued with his racistic barbs at us.
We just internalized it and ignored him as we had been told to do by our headmaster. What that statement, “I don’t want to see blacks whilst I am eating…” meant to me, how violated I was for the first time, what it made me realize how so wrong my skin was. I was made to think it’s not just my skin; it’s everything inside me that was wrong, that was inferior. Over the years, I learned to internalize that feeling, to forget it, to live with it, to accept it.
I have heard stories of slavery. I have watched, only once so far, the movie 12 Years A Slave. I can’t re-watch it again. It’s horrible! I have heard stories of racism, stories of black killings like Rodney King and the resultant riots in California. I have heard of Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, Jesse Jackson, and many other black leaders. I have heard of those who were killed, maimed because of their skin colours in America like Ana Mae, Rosa Parks... I have read about Harriet Tubman Railroads. I have heard the noise around black lives matter, after another killing, and the reverse all lives matter etc, and you realise you don’t understand it beyond the vibes you hear from the media, some totally biased and cooked up, so I felt I didn’t know enough. I have toyed around the idea of writing a book during black lives matter movement but still felt I didn’t know enough. I know in some countries racism has whittled down, has transmuted into other forms like bigotry, institutional racism etc…
And as far back, I know the African continent has been riddled with poverty, tribal wars, killings, bad governance, and civil wars. I have explored that in other works but I felt there is a connection between all these African troubles with the broader issue of racism. So I decided to open the platform for writers to investigate all these issues, with the intention of mapping the way forward, finding areas to meet, transacting together. Here is the call I send out:
Africanization and Americanization: Searching for Inter-racial, Interstitial, Inter-sectional, and Interstates meeting spaces, Africa Vs North America, Volume 1
These two continents were under the colonial hammer that changed them completely. They went through the worst recorded cases of slave trade, human trafficking, sexual abuses, racial abuses, genocides…. They have several races, tribes and groups in each, which they also share between each other, that has been the site of tensions. As we find our feet in the 21st century a lot of us have become colour blind, have grown beyond sections, even states and this anthology is invaluable as it would try to dissect where we came from (pre-colonial, colonial, postcolonial, post racial etc), where we are now, where we want to head toward, especially the meeting points between or among the racial lines, sectional lines, states lines in trying to find spaces we have built or want to built among ourselves (in each of the continents, or between the countries in these continents, or between these two continents) as we move into the future. I am looking for writing that delves or tackles these issues in any genre, any topic, any style.... Sent me your best essays, literary fictions, non-fictions, plays, poetry, mixed genres etc, in English language(s) (or English translations). Sent work in only one genre of your choice!
Poetry (3 poems per poet, preferably short poems but I am still open for long poems)
Prose, plays and mixed genres (I piece per writer, of not more than 5000 words)
Work must be sent in only one attached document, also include your contact details in this document, i.e., Postal address, Tel no, Email address and a bio note of not more than 100 words.
Please sent your entries to Tendai R. Mwanaka at mwanaka13@gmail.com
Closing date for entries is 30 June 2017
No free contributors’ copies, no royalties but contributors will benefit immensely through publicity into both continents and worldwide.
Please adhere to submission guidelines!!
I am grateful I received a lot of entries around the issues outlined in the introduction and the call for work above. I read everything and chose the best entries I thought tried to frankly investigate these issues. The anthology comprises 107 pieces from 43 poets, 4 essayists, 6 storytellers, 1 playwright. It is arranged into 10 topical groups that would give a reader a rough sense of what the writings in each group are about. We have work from distinguished professors, leading theorists, researchers, academic poets, essayists, street poets, academicians, journalists, musicians, and visual people. The collection is vibrant, discursive, penetrating, and genuinely searches for solutions. It is invaluable to literary theorists, poetry collectors, language experts, social scientists, political theorists, race theorist, development practioners, students, human scientist etc…
