Poet Warsan Shire Shares Personal Triumphs and Inspirations

SBF: What are you trying to come to terms with in your poetry?

Warsan: My own humanity. In a way, try to maybe justify some of the choices that maybe my parents made, like things that had taken place and I resented for a long time. To give everybody a fair voice, give myself a fair voice. And recently, I’ve been trying to play around with the landscape of memory and reshape it and reclaim it and find what it is that connects all of us, or whatever connects the bad to the good, too.

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THE AFROPOLITAN CAN COME OR GO - Osekre

An interesting discourse is going on among Africans and Africa-descent persons. They are asking the very pertinent question of who they are. Friends, this can only be called great. I'm loving it.

"This piece is an attempt to refocus an exciting conversation going around the blogosphere which could benefit from an open-minded discourse on the term “Afropolitan.” I believe this is a conversation we must have as Africans.  How we shape this dialogue will influence the perception of a huge generation existing now, but going forward, will also help shape a variety of identities around the world. While we are all unique, and are free to express ourselves however we feel, I disagree with Marta Tveit’s assertion that “The Afropolitan Must Go,” I believe “Afropolitans can come or go.”

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Why I’m Not An Afropolitan

Unlike Tveit, when I first heard “Afropolitan” I was excited. I am always looking for language that expresses my position as an Irish/Nigerian woman who is deeply connected to her Nigerianness. I’d rather refrain as describing myself as half anything, and I detest the word mixed-race. I thought perhaps Afropolitan presented an alternative to this terminology and, interestingly, positioned me with others through a shared cultural and aesthetic leaning rather than a perceived racial classification. Further, the term identified that you could be black or African without having to subscribe to the depressingly limited identities widely perceived as being authentic.

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