Translating as 'initiation', kumukanda is the name given to the rites a young boy from the Luvale tribe must pass through before he is considered a man. In this book, the poems explore this passage: between two worlds, ancestral and contemporary; between the living and the dead; between the gulf of who he is and how he is perceived.
‘The N WordYou sly devil. Lounging in a Pinter scriptor pitched from a transit van’s rolled-down window;my shadow on this un-lit road, though you’ve beensmuggled from polite conversation.’A writer of power and precision, as striking on the page as he is on the stage, this is Kayo Chingonyi’s much-anticipated first collection. In poems that are at once assured and incisive, he eloquently confronts issues of race, self-portraiture and self-perception to shine a light on all that is dark, hidden, 'smuggled from polite conversation’. Here too are poems on exile, migration, masculinity and hip-hop, all in Kayo's inimitable passion and style.This unmissable debut promises to speak about race in the UK as eloquently and with the same urgency and force as Claudia Rankine’s CITIZEN did in the US.