There Where It's So Bright in Me

There Where Its So Bright in Me pries at the complexities of differencerace, religion, gender, nationalitythat shape twenty-first-century geopolitical conditions. With work spanning more than thirty-five years and as one of the most prominent figures in contemporary African literature, Tanella Boni is uniquely positioned to test the distinctions of self, other, and belonging. Two twenty-first-century civil wars have made her West African home country of Cte dIvoire unstable. Abroad in the United States, Boni confronts the racialized violence that accompanies the idea of Blackness; in France, a second home since her university days, Boni encounters the nationalism roiling much of Europe as the consequences of (neo)colonialism shift the continents ethnic and racial profile. What would it mean for the borders that segregatefor these social, political, cultural, personal, and historicizing forces that enshroud usto lose their dominion? In a body under constant threat, how does the human spirit stay afloat? Bonis poetry is characterized by a hard-earned buoyancy, given her subject matter. Her empathy, insight, and plainspoken address are crucial contributions to the many difficult contemporary conversations we must engage.