The January Children
Safia Elhillo
"The January Children" is a collection of deeply personal poems that explores the experience of navigating the postcolonial world as a stranger in one’s own land. The author mythologizes family histories until they break open, using them to explore aspects of Sudan’s history and diaspora. The poems speak to tensions generated by a hyphenated identity in the Arab and African world. It is a postcolonial narrative that is both terrifying and tender, melancholy and defiant.