/ Exposed Brick Literary Magazine (2019-on going)
Exposed Brick Literary Magazine or #BrickLit is a curation of quality writing and design, started by young creatives in Lawrence, Massachusetts. BrickLit is run by two friends and artists from Lawrence, Massachusetts, best friends Milly Joseph and Wangeci Gitau who started this journey November 2019 during a conversation at a writing club in their local independent bookstore. This project was a way to encourage more creation and consumption of literacy and art in the city, a way for everyone to read and write more. At the beginning they faced the typical issues a startup publication might encounter: lack of funding and a dying print market. Inevitably, they found success due to a community that believes in them, artists who trust them, a passion for the work, and a historical moment that reminds us all why this work is needed. Today, BrickLit has published five issues, paying over 200 artists for their work.
/ I’m Not Allowed to Explain (Only Foreshadow & Reminisce) (2021)
“I’m Not Allowed to Explain (Only Foreshadow & Reminisce)” is my second book, an attempt to recollect the space between our bodies and our spirits when we give in to the journey life sets before us. Through poetry, I explore the elusive nature of an American upbringing as a queer Black immigrant femme, specifically recounting the dispossession of personhood I experienced at a predominantly white college as my family back home went through deportation proceedings. Between interpersonal violence and systemic oppression, “I'm Not Allowed to Explain'' is about the stories we cannot tell in real time and what happens to them when they are left to ferment in the shadows. With prayers and confessions, I name what I am most afraid of: that sometimes surviving means starting over and starting over means we forget everything we were, an alchemy as tragic as it is redeeming.
/coka mũcĩĩ
Coka Mũciĩ is a collection of poems in Gikũyũ and English about my trip home to Kenya after being away for 24 years. The poems and reflections in these pages trace a journey across three timelines: ten years since I promised myself I would begin healing wounds I did not yet fully understand, twenty-five years since I first arrived in the United States, and sixty-two years since Kenya gained independence, the same year my father was born and a moment that I realized recently shaped the course of my family’s history. Above all, these pages honor the life I left behind, the stories that continued to unfold while I was away, and the quiet miracle of discovering the truth of my lineage, from the physical place, the traditional culture, and even the family conflicts that led to me being who I am today. In a moment when immigrants are often scapegoated for society’s struggles, I hope this book invites curiosity about the nuanced lives people lived before they arrived somewhere new. We must regard all parts, not in spite of their complexities, but precisely because these complexities are what make us deeply human and worthy of living, whether we stay home or migrate across the world.