Mother Tongues: Poems

By Tsitsi Ella Jaji (NHC Fellow, 2017–18)

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019

From the publisher’s description:

Tsitsi Ella Jaji’s second full-length collection of poems, Mother Tongues, begins at home, with the first words and loves we learn, and the most intimate vows we swear. How deep does your language go back? Jaji’s artful verse is a three-tiered gourd of sustenance, vessel, and folklore. The tongues speak the beginnings and the present; they capture and claim the losses, the ironies, and a poet’s human evolution. Mother Tongues is a collection of language unto itself that translates directly to the heart.

Awards and Prizes

Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize (2019)

Subjects

Literature / Fiction and Poetry / Poetry / Language / Intimacy / Family /

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Jaji, Tsitsi Ella (NHC Fellow, 2017–18). Mother Tongues: Poems. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019.