Migritude

by Shailja Patel (Artist)

The U.S. debut of internationally acclaimed poet and performance artist Shailja Patel, Migritude is a tour-de-force hybrid text that confounds categories and conventions. Part poetic memoir, part political history, Migritude weaves together family history, reportage and monologues to create an achingly beautiful portrait of women's lives and migrant journeys undertaken under the boot print of Empire. Patel, who was born in Kenya and educated in England and the U.S., honed her poetic skills in performances of this work that have received standing ovations throughout Europe, Africa and North America. She has been described by the Gulf Times as "the poetic equivalent of Arundhati Roy" and by CNN as "the face of globalization as a people-centered phenomenon of migration and exchange." Migritude includes interviews with the author, as well as performance notes and essays.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Kenya, Africa, Feminism

168 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2010

About the author

CNN calls Shailja Patel “the people-centered face of globalization”. An internationally acclaimed Kenyan poet, playwright, activist, and public intellectual, her performances have received standing ovations on four continents. Trained as a political economist, accountant and yoga teacher, she uses text, voice, body, and critical thinking to delve for truth and dissect power. Patel has been African Guest Writer at Sweden’s Nordic Africa Institute and poet-in-residence at the Tallberg Forum, Sweden’s alternative to Davos. She has appeared on the BBC World Service, NPR and Al-Jazeera, and her political essays appear in Le Monde Diplomatique and The New Inquiry, among others. Her work has been translated into 16 languages, and appears in No Serenity Here, the groundbreaking multilingual Chinese–African poetry anthology. Honors include a Sundance Theatre Fellowship, a Creation Fund Award from the National Performance Network, the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award from IRN-Africa, the Voices of Our Nations Poetry Award, a Lambda Slam Championship, and the Outwrite Poetry Prize. Patel is a founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice, a civil society coalition which works for an equitable democracy in Kenya. In 2012, she was Kenya’s poet for Poetry Parnassus, in the London Cultural Olympiad. Migritude has been published in Italy and Sweden, and was was shortlisted for the prestigious Camaiore Poetry Prize in Italy.

Reviews

[Nafiza · Rating 5 out of 5]

We overdress, we migrants. We care too much how we
look to you. We get it wrong. We ought to look like we
don't give a fuck. We show up ridiculously groomed,
bearing elaborate gifts. We are too formally grateful.

We cringe in silent shame for you when you don't offer
food or drink. Eat before us without sharing. Serve
yourselves first. Insult us without knowing.

Two white Americans said to me, when I shared my
doughnut with them:

We've never seen anyone cut a doughnut into three pieces.

We calibrate hunger precisely. Define enough differently
from you. Enough is what's available, shared between
everyone present. We are incapable of saying, as you can
so easily:

Sorry, there's not enough for you.

And:

How much we can do without is our strength. But you
find it comic. Pitiable. Miserly. You just can't imagine
how a family of eight lives in a one-room apartment.
You don't want to think how someone survives on $7 an
hour. It makes you uncomfortable when we eat stems
and peels. Dry our clothes in the sun. Repair instead
of replace. You mistake austerity, living without waste,
for deprivation.

Intense, eh? Shailja Patel's Migritude is a collection of vignettes, prose, and letters that detail not just her movement across countries, cultures, and continents, but is also a hurricane full of rage at the injustice committed to the Others by the hedgemony, in post-colonial speak.

In the first poem of the collection "How Ambi Became Paisley," Patel talks about how culture was mined and stolen from Indians specifically. The poem details a different kind of migration--the enforced kind. In bare and beautiful words, she asks:

In 1846, Britain annexed the vale of Kashmir, fabled
paradise of beauty, and sold it to Maharaj Gulab Singh of
Jammu for one million pounds.

How do you price a country? How do you value its
mountains and lakes, the scent of its trees, the colors of
its sunset? What's the markup on the shapes of fruit in
the dreams of its people?

The poem talks about how Kashmiri clothes became cashmere, Ambi became paisley, Mosuleen became muslin, and "chai became a beverage invented in California." She details how British officials cut off the fingers of Indian weavers who made Mosuleen because British fabric couldn't compete in the market with Indian mosuleen.

But perhaps the most astringent of all the questions:

How many ways can you splice a history? Price a
country? Dice a people? Slice a heart? Entice what's been
erased back into story? My-gritude.

Migritude's story begins with a suitcase of saris that Patel's mother gave to her as a trousseau. Patel uses these saris to ground herself into her culture and uses these same saris in theater performances of Migritude. Originally a spoken word performance, the collection found another medium from which to inspire in the form of this book.

We have tried to find books that deal with immigrant experiences all throughout this month but perhaps we haven't yet spoken about some experiences that are no less real for their unspoken-ness. Being an immigrant myself, the experiences Shailja Patel talks about in Migritude are familiar to me.

People who immigrate to different countries are expected to assimilate completely into the new culture as if their culture of origin is somehow inferior to the one in the country they are migrating to. Instead of integration, assimilation is taught. These immigrants, who have moved for all sorts of reasons, are recreated as objects of pity and inferiority and often judged as somehow Other even though they occupy the same spacez and breathe same air and belong to the same species.

This reduction of a person, of a people, is also something Patel addresses beautifully:

Listen:
my father speaks Urdu,
language of dancing peacocks,
rosewater fountains -
even its curses are beautiful.
He speaks Hindi,
suave and melodic,
earthy Punjabi
salty-rich as saag paneer,
coastal Swahili laced with Arabic.
He speaks Gujarati,
solid ancestral pride.

Five different languages,
five different worlds.
Yet English
shrinks
him
down
before white men
who think their flat, cold, spiky words
make the only reality.

The book discusses Idi Amin's expulsion of Indians from Uganda and isn't afraid of naming the names of those responsible found in documents declassified in 2001. In a poignant piece, she talks about the indignities her parents face when they are taken aside in the airport on a trip to the US and held for no reason for 4 hours.

I haven't seen my brother in more than three years but his application to visit Canada was rejected on the grounds that he is hale and hearty and may leave his family in Fiji where he has a job and a house to stay in Canada where he has, apart from family members, nothing.

Migritude.

Patel's poems will make you cry as "Eater of Death" did me. The poem is about Bibi Sardar, an Afghani woman whose husband and seven children were killed in a US airstrike is sharp and thorny. Or maybe the poem that will break you is the one about how British soldiers raped women and  children without worry for consequences of their actions--the authorities turn a blind eye to their doings.

Her poetry will make you angry and leave you unsettled and wondering about the spaces you occupy both physically and mentally. They will leave you aware of yourself in a way you may not have been before.

Read Migritude. It just may be the best book you read ever.

[Furqan]

“The children in my dreams speak in Gujurati
turn their trusting faces to the sun
say to me
care for us nurture us
in my dreams I shudder and I run.
I am six
in a playground of white children
Darkie, sing us an Indian song!

Eight
in a roomful of elders
all mock my broken Gujurati
English girl!
Twelve, I tunnel into books
forge an armor of English words.

Eighteen, shaved head
combat boots -
shamed by masis
in white saris
neon judgments
singe my western head.

Mother tongue.
Matrubhasha
tongue of the mother
I murder in myself.

Through the years I watch Gujurati
swell the swaggering egos of men
mirror them over and over
at twice their natural size.

Through the years
I watch Gujurati dissolve
bones and teeth of women, break them
on anvils of duty and service, burn them
to skeletal ash.

Words that don’t exist in Gujurati:
Self-expression.
Individual.
Lesbian.

English rises in my throat
rapier flashed at yuppie boys
who claim their people “civilized” mine.
Thunderbolt hurled
at cab drivers yelling
Dirty black bastard!
Force-field against teenage hoods
hissing
Fucking Paki bitch!
Their tongue - or mine?
Have I become the enemy?

Listen:
my father speaks Urdu
language of dancing peacocks
rosewater fountains
even its curses are beautiful.
He speaks Hindi
suave and melodic
earthy Punjabi
salty rich as saag paneer
coastal Kiswahili
laced with Arabic,
he speaks Gujurati
solid ancestral pride.

Five languages
five different worlds
yet English
shrinks
him
down
before white men
who think their flat cold spiky words
make the only reality.

Words that don’t exist in English:
Najjar
Garba
Arati.

If we cannot name it
does it exist?
When we lose language
does culture die? What happens
to a tongue of milk-heavy
cows, earthen pots
jingling anklets, temple bells,
when its children
grow up in Silicon Valley
to become
programmers?

Then there’s American:
Kin’uh get some service?
Dontcha have ice?
Not:
May I have please?
Ben, mane madhath karso?
Tafadhali nipe rafiki
Donnez-moi, s’il vous plait
Puedo tener…..

Hello, I said can I get some service?!
Like, where’s the line for Ay-mericans
in this goddamn airport?

Words that atomized two hundred thousand Iraqis:
Didja see how we kicked some major ass in the Gulf?
Lit up Bagdad like the fourth a’ July!
Whupped those sand-niggers into a parking lot!

The children in my dreams speak in Gujurati
bright as butter
succulent cherries
sounds I can paint on the air with my breath
dance through like a Sufi mystic
words I can weep and howl and devour
words I can kiss and taste and dream
this tongue
I take
back.”

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Have you ever taken a word in your hand, dared to shape your palm to the hollow where the fullness falls away? Have you ever pointed it back to its beginning? Felt it leap and shudder in your fingers like a dowsing rod? Jerk like a severed thumb? Flare with the forbidden name of a goddess returning? My-gritude."

In his Foreword, Vijay Prashad writes: "Shailja's book isn't simply about migrants. It's about the condition of migration—of migritude. It is not a cultural anthropology of migrant lives, but rather a philosophical meditation on what it means to live within the concept of Migrant." Patel draws the term from Césaire's "négritude", a heritage that suggests, according to Prashad, "there is a "compass of suffering" shared by migrants of color into the heartlands of power [that] shows how this compass binds them in unexpected ways... the horizontal assimilation engineered by migrants as they smile at each other, [aware of] what is carried on each other's backs." Patel seeks to articulate a coherent migrant identity.

Migritude in a book form goes far beyond just being a lifeless transcript of the lively performance. Included herein are illustrations, images, and black pages that make reading a visual sensory experience that supplements the auditory nature of the work. Later sections contain behind-the-scenes notes that explicate Patel's thought process, poems that ended up not making the cut in the final piece, a timeline of important events, and two interviews. While I couldn't find full recordings, only clips, the text does its best to evoke it. Patel writes: "History buried is history repeated... Reclaiming those erased or hidden histories is vital political and creative work, central to my purpose as a writer."



(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[dianne b. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Patel writes beautifully and sometimes brilliantly - she is so spot on, capturing the patterns of abuse of all bullies everywhere, and the loneliness and frustration of feeling like you’re the only one seeing it, the only one feeling the pain that is elsewhere. Distraught over the death of 7 children killed with one bomb while they ate breakfast in Kabul:
“lighten UP for chrissake it’s not like YOU have family in Eye-rak!” *

Her family’s history as it intersects with world history (wait...what’s the difference?) written season by season of her life.

i don’t see the value in partially duplicating stories, words, parts of poems in the “Shadow Book”. i found that construct irritating and the exact wording the second time around felt cheap - it had lost much of it’s power.
And it IS powerful; a valuable read.

*yes, i know, wrong country - i’m quoting Amrikans here!

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

a fitting way to end the semester

[bookiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

So powerful. Amazing... I wish I could find the play online or to have the opportunity to watch it live. Wow...

[Lauren]

"As a child, I swore I would never wear clothes i couldn't run or fight in."

▫️MIGRITUDE by Shailja Patel, 2010 from Kaya Press.

Patel describes her MIGRITUDE as "Spoken word theatre. Text-based performance. Fully-embodied poetry."

Using textiles, linguistics, art, documents, and her own family's memories, Patel's spoken word theatre is also a history of the South Asian communities in East Africa, specifically in Kenya and Uganda.

A collection of documents, but also a staged performance and expression, physically performed in many locations, but also crystallized in this stunning book.

Patel uses the paisley pattern as a symbol of migration, literally weaving and designing textiles into her work with evocative descriptions and prose poems about each sari and gagra choli in her "suitcase", calling up her peoples' (and her own) history of migration and expulsion in East Africa, and her own migration and time living in the UK and US.
Along with the personal notes and some radical critiques of imperialism and war in the 21st century.

Gujarati proverbs, postcards from her parents, and stunning artwork from East Africa and South Asia interspersed between poems. The last section of the book includes details on the staging and actual performance of these pieces, and illuminating interviews with Patel and her theatre collaborator.

Truly a unique experience, and one I am so glad to have read. It's a favorite of 2021 thus far.

"How much we can do without is our strength. But you find it comic. Pitiable. Miserly. You  *just can't imagine* how a family of eight lives in a one-room apartment. You *don't want to think* how someone survives on $7 and hour. It makes you uncomfortable when we eat stems and peels. Dry our clothes in the sun. Repair instead of replace. You mistake austerity, living without waste, for deprivation."
.
Excerpt from "The Making (Migrant Song)" by Shailja Patel
.
Wish I could share the entire poem (but it's 4 pages long...) Probably my favorite piece in a book of favorite pieces.

[Ajk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lifted this book from an AirBNB. What it was doing in Santa Barbara, I had no idea. But I had been looking for it forever and there it was, waiting for me on Christmas Day when I had nothing else going on in my life.

I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into. I knew this was something good, I knew it riffed off Negritude, but I had no idea about the one-woman play, about the saris, or about Shailja Patel herself. These were all good discoveries! This isn't a book in the romance sense, but a book in the coherent argument sense. She brings in prose, poetry, quotes, illustrations, and descriptions in a wildly novel way. Even for someone like me with little patience for poetry, it works. It works really well.

The central idea – that there is a coherent migrant identity throughout the world in the 21st century – is both unique and, upon revealing it, kinda "no duh." It's explicated so brilliantly that the reader is half-convinced they thought of the idea themselves, and that Patel just brought the historical backing. It's all done so beautifully and so cleverly that I couldn't help but be carried away in it.

[Ashraf S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What an incredible piece of art. In such a short amount of pages Shailja Patel captures so much strong emotions and the generational trauma that haunts her.
I’m in awe of Shailja Patel’s writing. The prose, poetry and letters was raw and sentimental. This was such a unique experience and I loved every second of it. I have a 9am lecture for this text tomorrow morning and I am ridiculously excited to dive deeper into this wonderful book. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of looking forward to a 9am.🥴 This may be my favourite text I’ve read in the entirety of my university course so far! I cannot recommend this enough.

[Markus Hammargren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vilken magspark till "bok". Otroligt vacker, drabbande och fruktansvärd.
Vill köpa 10 ex, spara till mina barn och ge till alla andra jag bryr mig om!

[Diya · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's lucky and also tragic i found this book only after i finished my thesis lol

[shani p ❀ · Rating 5 out of 5]

this might be the most beautiful and resonating piece of literature i've ever read. this story, this poetry, this play ~ meant so much to me personally. i cried multiple times. it made me feel a little more connected to the culture and ancestors that i spent so much time and effort separating myself from in my childhood and early teens. my family's story is almost identical to the one presented here — gujarati indians living in east africa, displaced by the dictator idi amin, moved to australia/the uk/the us. cannot thank my partner enough for finding and gifting this to me ~ 10/10

[Sophia Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mesmerizing. Harrowing. One of the most difficult books I have ever read, and one of the most powerful. Thank you, Shailja, for your words.

Also, I gushed about how much I loved this book the Shailja on Twitter and she bought my chapbook of poetry and I am sort of floating right now.

[Elaina]

Migritude: A Look Into the Lives
Of the Erased
How much of the human experience do we really know? To what extent do we realize the strife and struggle of the men and women that history wants us to forget? In Shailja Patel’s collective work entitled Migritude, we as readers get a first-hand look into the migrant experience through Patel’s own life. Though a beautiful combination of poetry, letters, art, and personal recollection, Patel describes the attitude brought upon by migrant life, a mindset that she coins as “migritude”.
In my opinion, I thought this book was wonderful. Like Patel, I too come from an immigrant family. There were many instances throughout the book that I found myself being transported back to my childhood. One of the most nostalgic passages for me personally came from part three: The Making and Other Poems. This section includes a poem by Patel entitled WHAT WE KEEP. In this poem she describes not only the great care and consideration put into making traditional foods, but also what these foods mean to the collective migrant attitude. This poem helped me come to realize why my family holds onto certain recipes so dearly. They signify parts of our culture that cannot be taken away by terror or invasion. No matter where we are in the world, we are able to make the things that remind us of home.
This books power continues to resonate in the recollections of trauma felt not only by
Patel herself, but also by her people throughout history. Patel is an African native of Indian decent, meaning that her people have been a constant victim of British colonization. One section that I found myself particularly stunned by was section eleven: Maasai Women Rioting [Mother’s Voice]. Though the story of the Maasai women is conveyed rather casually in Patel’s mother’s voice, it still struck me as one of the most powerful moments of the entire book. We learn that the women are rioting as a result of constantly being molested by the colonizers that have invaded their land. Though an accurate historical recollection, I thought this detail provided an incredibly powerful metaphor for what colonization does to a peoples’ livelihood. Though it strips and rapes and kills, colonization cannot kill the soul of a culture. Though these women have been horridly abused, they still have the power to fight back and riot. This, I believe, is the ultimate act of the “migrant attitude” described by Patel. History has tried to silence these women, yet they continue to fight back. Migritude gives a voice to these women, as well as many others that have been silenced throughout history.
As a reader, I cannot find myself able to make any negative critiques on this book. The layout is beautiful and is furthermore accentuated by the stunning paisley art included at the beginning of every section.

(I originally had pictures of the art but they wont let me include them for some reason)


Overall, the book is a work of art outside of the traditional literary sense. It channels a number of art forms in order to convey its message in an increasingly striking and powerful way. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book to anyone I know, especially somebody who comes from an immigrant family and is looking to further connect with their roots. It holds a truth that should be known by all. It reveals a history that should be universally taught. It conveys a beauty scarcely seen in our society.

[Taylor Belleville · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Perhaps, in the end, this is why one is a poet. So that once in a lifetime, one can say the right words to the right person.”

I have always felt a deep, personal connection to poetry, more so than I feel when reading other types of written work. There is something so raw, powerful, and emotional in the way that poetry speaks to the reader. But Migritude hits in a different way than any other book of poetry that I have read before. While it is not comprised entirely of poetry, the way in which Shailja Patel writes even her prose has a poetic quality to it: it reads differently than a typical narrative, with a sing-song lilt as opposed to straight words on a page. Migritude is one of the most difficult collections that I have ever read. It is mesmerizing, hallowing, and forceful. Patel is able to craft a narrative through prose, letters, and vignettes that detail the strength in womanhood as she travels between countries and cultures, her writing fueled by her rage at the injustices that sweep the nations around her. Migritude is poetry as a documentary; a first-hand account of what it means to be displaced in one’s home, in one’s body, and in one’s life.

Migritude is Patel’s personal experiences through growing up and moving from place to place, and seeing the impact that war and colonialism has on these different homes of hers. This is the documentation of the horrors that she and the woman around her have faced, and a way to break the silence on rape, war, violence, indignation, and violation that plague her people. While these tragedies deeply affect Patel, she does not shy away from them, instead addressing them as a poignant reminder of the injustices that she has faced. She writes in Migritude: “History buried becomes history repeated. A whole generation of Africans have been denied the truth of their own history, and so we do not really know ourselves, or our countries. Reclaiming those erased or hidden histories is vital political and creative work, and is central to my purpose as a writer.” Patel documents these stories, no matter how hard they may be to face, so that these events that are so close to her heart are not forgotten; so that the injustices that she has seen will perhaps not be repeated if they are immortalized within the pages of her book and scripts. This is Patel’s written documentation of the diasporic journeys that she has lived through, as a woman, poet, migrant, and performer, and she guides readers on her on journey of survival through it all.

Migritude is a narrative that can be enjoyed by all readers, but it will be particularly powerful for those who have lived through injustices of their own. Read this book if you are looking for a novel that will haunt you long after you’ve finished the last pages; Patel shares the shameful stories of an empire’s past in a way that makes the reader understand what it means to live through pain but still find the beauty within life. Migritude is creative, beautiful, powerful, and honest, showcasing the worst sides of humanity as Patel gives her people and herself a voice.

[james · Rating 4 out of 5]

'make it out of the sari that wraps you / in tender celebration / like the mother you longed for / make it out of the mother you got / in all her wounded magnificence

make it out of every scar and callus / on your father's hands / and how you always wanted tough mechanic's hands like his / credentialed by each ground-down / fingernail each / palm line seamed with grease

make it / to find out / what your own hands are good for'

'I try to explain love / in shillings / to those who've never gauged who gets to leave / who has to stay / who breaks free / and what they pay / those who've never counted love / in every rung of the ladder / from survival / to choice / a force as grim and determined / as a boot up the backside / a spur that draws blood / a mountaineer's rope / that yanks / relentlessly / up

my parents never say / they love us / they save and count / count and save'

//

FUCK this is a brilliant piece. (it's the transcription of – or sheet-music for – a piece of performance art, so while it resembles poetry I suppose it's not strictly correct to call it a 'collection'.)

for being about a woman's experience emigrating from kenya to the UK & then US, I found a lot of stuff in here that cut straight through me. particularly the parent-escapee relationship; the letters in the mother's voice, the 'shilling love' poems. my god.

the saris-in-the-mother's-suitcase bit was really interesting to experience on the page. it's a pity I can't see patel perform it live

[Natasha Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patel is obviously a powerful writer, but I honestly found most of these poems to be a little heavy-handed and mawkish. After watching a recording of the spoken-word performance off of which this book is based, I think that this poetry should have been left in its original dynamic format. Patel had a specific vision for staging the saris, incorporating physical comedy and allusive moments of dance, etc. All of those elements get lost in the sterile form of a chapbook. I would probably have enjoyed the original performance of Migritude a lot more than I enjoyed reading just the poetic bones (which, you can admit, have a kind of nagging tone).

I will say that I’m grateful to this book for introducing me to Patel, who is a principled and inventive writer/activist with consistently good politics (afaik). Migritude’s interest in weaving personal family history together with macro-narratives of history is grounded in a clear radical framework. In this sense, Patel is a cut above many of her contemporaries who may write evocatively about identity + migration, but still totally absent themselves from mass politics. It’s funny that at one point Patel compares the colors of the saris to the palette of an Almodovar movie, because her play with personal + cultural memory really reminded me of Parallel Mothers. Overall this is worth reading; I just question whether it really needed to be standardized into a book format.

[Mridula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful read! The piece about saris in suitcases and references to their colours and meanings brought back memories of my mother, grandmother, and aunties. I’d love to see the author perform Migritude on stage.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love love love this book!

[Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn’t really need to be a book.

[erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

never read anything like it

[april ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

didn’t change my life but there’s good stuff in here!

[Belle Gage · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must-read. TW for descriptions of genocide and rape

[Clifton Gachagua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shailja has found a way to bridge an existence, to reconcile what it means to live far from home, even when home becomes a place we do not always want to remember. Migritude suggests movement, but its allure is such that it transforms the basic act of movement into a performance. I am made to imagine that Migritude is also a trousseau of saris, of songs one covers his nakedness with. When Shailja sings it easy to think of the things she speaks of as irreconcilable, her voice delivers truths in a manner that suggests that nothing can be done. Indeed, as to history there is nothing that can be done. But there are those other truths that are almost forgotten among us. Often the ills of past and present powers go unnoticed, or they become award-winning documentaries, broadcast on TV for a night and forgotten, but Shailja has found a way to embed all this into her poetry, so that it becomes impossible to forget, memory almost becomes that which no longer slowly fades but gently blooms. Migritude is a journey from Nairobi to San Francisco through London. Overly simplified, that is what it is. That is its surface. On closer reading it is an unending songs bobs under this experience of travel between continents, a conversation between her and her parents, and one that is going on inside her. As we are made witnesses to some of the private moments she is not afraid to lay bare the many other truths we have come to forget. Migritude is in motion, it has an origin and a development, and finally it envelopes you in its scope and language, its music of meditation.
I think of Shailja as the best East African poet I have read in a long while. I know I do not need to hear or see her on stage to experience the power of Migritude. The poems enact their own performance on the lips. You are aware that there is no such thing as reading Migritude, you are consuming it, the same way a child easily trusts the endearments of a mother while he dreams of the splendor of a Malachite Kingfisher.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A original voice and approach that combines prose with lyric and image--weaves personal experience into the greater history of South Asian migrations from Gujarat, focused on her home country Kenya. Depicts quite well the changes in her generation and its reconciliation with tradition using other voices and examining the essence of such cultural signifiers as the sari or the ceremony of the mangal sutra.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, creative, honest, powerful work about identity, colonialism, power, history, migration, women. Wonderful combination of prose and poetry that made it so hard to put down. The book includes a description of the stage performance which adds a whole different dimension to the words that you've just read.

[V. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I want to make the claim that "this probably should not have been a book." Maybe activism is a justification on its own but If oud myself thinking something along the lines of 'not everything with four wheels is a car.'

[Anne Lien · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I’ve read. Beautifully written from an artistic performance. Sectioned into many parts, each with a different message. Highlighted the struggles and power dynamics of immigration. This book is extremely powerful and holds an important message.

[Gregory Duke]

I have no interest in rating this. It's all meant to be performed, but it's also poetry and image projection and dance and slam, so this book is sort of a sampler with some background and interviews. Interesting and emotive though.