“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
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front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
Feeling and Ugly by Danai Mupotsa (Impepho Press, 2018)
This collection of poetry gathers the various statuses and locations Danai moves across, as daughter, mother, teacher, scholar and writer. From these places, many of the poems try to approach difficult feelings about what it means to "do politics" from an empathetic complexity. "I'm raging, sometimes that makes me petty" is one such example.
The collection carries a set of standpoints, or willfulness about pedagogy, politics and optimism. And while she carries an attachment to a non-reparative, or negative affect across the collection, she closes in describing the work, as love poems. This collection is a long love letter to those who are willful.