The January Children
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In her dedication Safia Elhillo writes, “The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where children were assigned birth years by height, all given the birth date January 1.” What follows is a deeply personal collection of poems that describe the experience of navigating the postcolonial world as a stranger in one’s own land.
The January Children depicts displacement and longing while also questioning accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home. The poems mythologize family histories until they break open, using them to explore aspects of Sudan’s history of colonial occupation, dictatorship, and diaspora. Several of the poems speak to the late Egyptian singer Abdelhalim Hafez, who addressed many of his songs to the asmarani—an Arabic term of endearment for a brown-skinned or dark-skinned person. Elhillo explores Arabness and Africanness and the tensions generated by a hyphenated identity in those two worlds.
No longer content to accept manmade borders, Elhillo navigates a new and reimagined world. Maintaining a sense of wonder in multiple landscapes and mindscapes of perpetually shifting values, she leads the reader through a postcolonial narrative that is equally terrifying and tender, melancholy and defiant.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Elhillo contemplates the meaning of home and what it means to belong in a taut debut collection of heartfelt poems that speak to the push-and-pull predicament specific to people who can claim multiple cultural identities, and whose identities reflect multiple geographies. The book is both personal and political, a love letter to Sudan and a memoriam for ghosts of happiness past. For example, in "The Last Time Marvin Gaye Was Heard in the Sudan," Elhillo takes a snapshot of her parents before they met. The moment is colored by nostalgia, the crackle of untapped potential, as "the night air is the gap in her teeth/ she sings in a lilting english to a slow song." The dreamlike image of untouchable youth is quickly interrupted when the police arrive at the end of the poem, turning a beautiful uncertainty into a certainty of violence. Linguistic investigation also plays a role, as Elhillo occasionally toys with Arabic vocabulary and translation. Abdelhalim Hafez, a popular Egyptian singer, makes regular appearances, connecting Elhillo to her Sudanese roots and grounding her longing for purpose and a sense of place. Elhillo ponders what she knows about Hafez, and perhaps what she knows about herself: "i am most afraid of having nothing/ to bring back so i never come home."
