We came here to find refuge / They called us refugees / So we hid ourselves in their language / until we sounded just like them. / Changed the way we dressed / to look just like them / Made this our home / until we lived just like them. -- from J.J.Bola's poem "Refuge" … Continue reading Literature of exile: The refugee activist poet J. J. Bola
The Wounded Soul of a Black Elephant & A Prayer to the Ancestors by Gabriel Mwènè Okoundji is a bilingual edition of the poems of the prize-winning Congolese poet Gabriel Mwènè Okoundji translated into English by Peter Figueroa. “I spent my childhood, like most children brought up in the Congolese bush, among women. Their talk, … Continue reading Title Pick: The Wounded Soul of a Black Elephant & A Prayer to the Ancestors by Gabriel Mwene Okoundji
Ebamba’s name means “mender” in Lingala, but everything in the Congolese twenty-something’s life seems to be falling apart. In the chaotic megacity of Kinshasa, the educated but unemployed young man must navigate the ever widening distance between tradition and modernity—from the payment of his fiancee’s exorbitant dowry to the unexpected sexual confession of his best … Continue reading Title Pick: Mr. Fix It by Richard Ali A Mutu
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 