Hurling Words at Consciousness

“By turns soothingly tender or implacably harsh, Hurling Words at Consciousness is an unflinching meditation on our globalized inequities. It is thoughtful and richly rewarding.” –Tejumola Olaniyan, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Mukoma wa Ngugi is a poet of extraordinary expressive gifts. This impressive volume casts a critical yet forgiving eye on closely-observed episodes from life in the United States, with knowing glances towards poets as diverse as Le’opold Se’dar Senghor and Matthew Arnold. The social concerns of an African poet in sympathy with political struggles throughout the Third World here jostle up against and defamiliarize the details of North American everyday life, which then suddenly take on new significance.” –Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois at Chicago

“While treating the reader to an expansive range of themes – death, war, life, love, nature, human relationships/encounters, personal reflections, art, politics, history, social justice, revolution and others – Mukoma wa Ngugi also succeeds in making a deeply profound, artistic statement. He decorates his intensely reflective utterance with a lacework of images, metaphors and other forms of figurative expression that reveal a keen artist at his craft. With this first volume of poetry, Mukoma wa Ngugi has clearly entered the world of published poets in style!” –Micere Mugo Githae, Syracuse University

“Like his late mentors, Frantz Fanon and Walter Rodney, Mukoma is a catalyst, a circuit board, a generator. Through his writings and activism, he expresses the idea within which many will think change, the dream within which many will envision change, and the hope within which many will imagine change.” –Meredith Terreta, LeMoyne College