Full Description
The Naming explores the movements, excesses, and extremes of existing as a postmodern individual, connecting these experiences to ancestry. The poems in this collection examine the various ways one remains tied to their ancestors by reimagining memories, history, homesteads, migration, and the intersections of the past, present, and possible futures. Through this exploration, the collection seeks to rebuild a world that doesn't merely replicate realities but reinvents, enshrines, and restories them.
Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto's poems offer a vital contribution to African cultural studies through their focus on Igbo heritage and ancestry.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Our Fathers' Fathers
A Call at Dawn
Appraisal
Unfurling
Naming
Marley's Lyrics in Two Parts or Where Does It Hurt the Most?
What I Said to God, Chukwu Ọ̀kịké
The Story of Chinụalụmọgụ Not Looking for Anything with His Lazy Eyes
Memorabilia
What Chinụalụmọgụ Made with Clouds
Once Upon a Time the Teeth
The Navel
Here
The Actual Story About the Keloid on Chinụalụmọgụ's Left Arm
Colors
The Gift
Teaching My Nephew
There Is a New Philosophy Now Called Kwechiri, to Persevere
The Measure of Lost Things
Itches
The Robin in My Heart
Worries
Once Upon a Girl, a Place of History
Chinụalụmọgụ Sits on His Balcony Pretending He Is a Parcel
Worries
The Teenager Who Became a Mother
What They Say I Do Not Carry Well
A Dead Son Does Not Answer the Phone
The World Will Never Run Out of Bad News
Ọzụbụlụ
Úgà
Monochrome Photos with Fragments in a Closet
As Seeing Is a Kind of Brightness
Okụzụ
At the Darien Gap
Dear Hope
Finding
Ìkwìkwíī, Sweet Night Bird, by the Lamp on a Dim-Lighted Street
Ọbashị
Confession
Chinụalụmọgụ's Therapist Kept Smiling at His Tricks
Web
A Page from Chinụalụmọgụ's Diary
Foregrounding
Falling Oranges
A Gift from Ọlisa Eloka, the One from Umuchu, to His Dearest Friend, Chinụalụmọgụ, Who Received It on the Afternoon of the Third Day After His Traditional Marriage to Mmesoma
Mercy
Clarity
On Chinụalụmọgụ Once Living in Lincoln, Nebraska
Forgiveness
A Call's Dusk
Notes
