Aracelis Girmay – författare

En gripande berättelse om afrikansk diaspora, att skiljas från en älskad plats, men också om kärlek mellan generationerna.

En dag vaknar den Zuzu och hennes barnbarn Kamau på månen. Kamau minns inte hemma, men ZuZu gör det, och hon saknar det fruktansvärt mycket. Tillsammans, med hjälp av tygrester och dans, bokstäver och sång, hittar Kamau och ZuZu ett sätt att skapa sig ett nytt liv i detta främmande land: ett nytt liv som inte bara är rotat i de berättelser, minnen och traditioner som ZuZu alltid bär på, med sig, utan som också kärleksfullt sträcker sig ut över det stora utrymmet för att kommunicera med familjen som de har skilts från.

Den hyllade poeten Aracelis Girmay och illustratören Diana Ejaita väver tillsammans en kraftfull berättelse inspirerad av den afrikanska diasporan, där trots chocken över att ha ryckts upp i denna främmande värld, utan något val eller en förklaring, och sorgen som kommer från det outgrundliga avståndet skiljer dem från deras älskade samhälle Kamau och ZuZu hittar ett sätt att leva, så som människor oftast gör. 

In this brave and devastatingly beautiful anthology, the illustrious poet and editor Aracelis Girmay gathers complex and intimate pieces that illuminate the nuances of personal and collective histories, analyses, practices, and choices surrounding pregnancy. Featuring the brilliant voices of writers such as Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, and more, this book is a lighthouse—a tool and companion—for those navigating pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, birth, loss, grief, and love.In So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, pieces range from essays to poems to interviews, with a broad entanglement of various themes, from many different perspectives including Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and more. At a time when people are becoming more and more limited in their choices surrounding pregnancy and abortion, this record is increasingly urgent and indispensable.

The poems in this highly anticipated second book are elegiac poems, as concerned with honoring our dead as they are with praising the living. Through Aracelis Girmay's lens, everything is animal: the sea, a jukebox, the desert. In these poems, everything possesses a system of desire, hunger, a set of teeth, and language. These are poems about what is both difficult and beautiful about our time here on earth.

Aracelis Girmay's debut collection won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is on the faculty at Drew University and Hampshire College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The poems in this highly anticipated second book are elegiac poems, as concerned with honoring our dead as they are with praising the living. Through Aracelis Girmay''s lens, everything is animal: the sea, a jukebox, the desert. In these poems, everything possesses a system of desire, hunger, a set of teeth, and language. These are poems about what is both difficult and beautiful about our time here on earth.

Aracelis Girmay''s debut collection won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is on the faculty at Drew University and Hampshire College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.