AYO writer Nana Brantuo shares some of her favorite titles by first- and second-generation Black immigrant women in the United States
Spanning across the diaspora, Black women writers—across genres and generations—are an undeniable cultural and intellectual force in the United States. With familial roots in Caribbean and on the African continent, first and second generation immigrant Black women writers immerse readers into the complex lives of girls and women who often, in the words of poet Ijeoma Umebinyo, are “too foreign for home, too foreign for here. Never enough for both.”
Here are eight works from first- and second-generation Black immigrant writers whose work beautifully captures and centers the complexity of our identities and journeys.
“I was the first Somali American legislator. Firsts are more than just iconic; they are totems for the groups they represent. The Somali community saw their fate intertwined with mine, which is why they were often my harshest critics when I stumbled. In turn, I inherited their collective failures…That aspect of being a first is quite painful.” —This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman by Ilhan Omar 
“half don’t even make it out or across you get to be ungrateful you get to be homesick inside your blue american passport do you even understand what was lost to bring you here” —“to make use of water” from The January Children by Safia Elhillo 
“Does anyone ever want to leave their home? The fresh fruit that drops from their backyard? The neighbors who wiped their snot? Does anyone ever want to believe they won’t come back? To the dog that sniffs their heel, to the bed that holds the echo of their body? Is there relief in pretending it is temporary, that one day it will be safe?” —“Fifty-Five Days After” from Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo 
“In his voice, we hear him climbing coconut trees, gripping the trunk with his bare feet and sandy legs, cutting coconuts down with a dull machete. We hear him dancing to konpa, the palm of one hand resting against his belly, his other hand raised high in the air as he rocks his hips from side to side.” — “About My Father’s Accent” from Ayiti by Roxane Gay 
“The four-foot cylindrical blue barrels line the Church Avenue sidewalk in front of a place called Little Jamaica—not too far from where Patsy lives. It’s a small place that is crowded with Jamaicans, waiting to send things home to relatives. They wait impatiently in the long lines. More urgent than the need to get to their American jobs on time or run errands is their one opportunity for the month, maybe for a whole year, to stuff all their love into barrels.” —Patsy: A Novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn 
“Her mind was always active, it seemed—what needed to be done, by when, how long it would take to get done. Even when she sang during her chores, she was mindful of the next chore. And the one after that. Life in America had made her into someone who was always thinking and planning the next step.” —Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue 
“Have I forgotten it— wild conch-shell dialect/ black apostrophe curled tight on my tongue?/ Or how the Spanish built walls of broken glass to keep me out/ but the Doctor Bird kept chasing and raking me in: This place/ is your place, wreathed in red Sargassum, ancient driftwood/ nursed on the pensive sea.”— “Home” from Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair 
“Sancocho, as my mother and her mother before her made it, is a broth of meat and veggies that brings warmth to the heart and soul. Pour each ingredient with care. Stir counter clockwise to slow down time a bit. Savor each bite as its own moment. Best if served over conversation and sharing of memories.” —Mami’s Recipe Book by Guadalís Del Carmen
Read an excerpt and more about each of Nana’s selections below
This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman by Ilhan Omar
“I was the first Somali American legislator. Firsts are more than just iconic; they are totems for the groups they represent. The Somali community saw their fate intertwined with mine, which is why they were often my harshest critics when I stumbled. In turn, I inherited their collective failures…That aspect of being a first is quite painful.“
U.S. Congresswoman for Minnesota’s 5th District Ilhan Omar’s autobiography begins in her birthplace of Mogadishu, Somalia and takes readers through her time as a refugee in Kenya, her arrival to the U.S. and then all the way through her election to the U.S. House of Representatives, making her the governing body’s first policymaker of Somali descent. In This is What America Looks Like, Omar explores her multiple and intersecting identities and the expectations she is met within and outside of her community.
The January Children by Safia Elhillo
“half don’t even make it out or across you get to be ungrateful you get to be homesick inside your blue american passport do you even understand what was lost to bring you here”—“to make use of water”
Safia Elhillo is a Sudanese American poet and editor of Halal If You Hear Me. In The January Children, Elhillo explores identity, belonging, displacement while complicating nationhood, diaspora, and homeland. The poem “to make use of water” consists of four parts: “dilute,” “blur,” “swim/dissolve,” and “drown (shared)” and explores the complex feelings and memories associated with home/homeland and mother tongue.
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
“Does anyone ever want to leave their home? The fresh fruit that drops from their backyard? The neighbors who wiped their snot? Does anyone ever want to believe they won’t come back? To the dog that sniffs their heel, to the bed that holds the echo of their body? Is there relief in pretending it is temporary, that one day it will be safe?”
Born to Dominican immigrants and raised in New York City, Elizabeth Acevedo is an award winning poet and author. Clap When You Land is a young adult verse-novel that centers the lives of sisters—Camino and Yahaira living in the Dominican Republic and the United States respectively—following the death of their father in the American Airlines Flight 587 crash of 2001. Acevedo explores sisterhood, mourning and grief, and forgiveness within a transnational Dominican family.
“In his voice, we hear him climbing coconut trees, gripping the trunk with his bare feet and sandy legs, cutting coconuts down with a dull machete. We hear him dancing to kompa, the palm of one hand resting against his belly, his other hand raised high in the air as he rocks his hips from side to side.” — “About My Father’s Accent”
Roxane Gay is a Haitian-American writer, professor, and editor for Gay Mag. Widely recognized for Bad Feminist and Hunger, Ayiti is among Gay’s earlier collections of work and focuses the stories and experiences of the Haitian diaspora living in the US. Within the essay “About My Father’s Accent,” Gay writes fondly of her father’s thick Haitian accent, while recalling moments of how Americans reacted to once they heard it.
“The four-foot cylindrical blue barrels line the Church Avenue sidewalk in front of a place called Little Jamaica—not too far from where Patsy lives. It’s a small place that is crowded with Jamaicans, waiting to send things home to relatives. They wait impatiently in the long lines. More urgent than the need to get to their American jobs on time or run errands is their one opportunity for the month, maybe for a whole year, to stuff all their love into barrels.”
Nicole Dennis-Benn is Brooklyn-based Jamaican novelist. Born and raised in Kingston, Dennis-Benn’s work explores gender, class, sexuality, love, and belonging. Patsy, Dennis-Benn’s work after her debut Here Comes the Sun, focuses on the life of an undocumented Jamaican woman living in New York, leaving her daughter and mother behind, in pursuit of her own path and own life.
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
“Her mind was always active, it seemed—what needed to be done, by when, how long it would take to get done. Even when she sang during her chores, she was mindful of the next chore. And the one after that. Life in America had made her into someone who was always thinking and planning the next step.”
Imbolo Mbue, a native of Cameroon, is a novelist and short story writer. In her debut, award-winning novel, Behold the Dreamers, Mbue focuses on the lives, experiences, and dreams of a Cameroonian immigrant family in contrast to the lives of their wealthy, white employers during the 2008 financial crisis. Through main character Neni, a wife and mother with hopes of becoming a pharmacist, Mbue illustrates the embodiment of dreams and disillusions of many undocumented African immigrant women in the U.S., complicating and critiquing the American dream.
“Have I forgotten it— wild conch-shell dialect/ black apostrophe curled tight on my tongue?/ Or how the Spanish built walls of broken glass to keep me out/ but the Doctor Bird kept chasing and raking me in: This place/ is your place, wreathed in red Sargassum, ancient driftwood/nursed on the pensive sea.”— “Home”
Originally from Montego Bay, Jamaica, Safiya Sinclair is a poet and memorist. Her multi-award winning poetry collection, Cannibal, is a beautiful, complex exploration of Jamaican history and culture, migration, race and race relations in the United States. Sinclair also explores otherness and womanhood through her purposeful appropriation of the anagram Caliban, derived from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Mami’s Recipe Book by Guadalís Del Carmen
“Sancocho, as my mother and her mother before her made it, is a broth of meat and veggies that brings warmth to the heart and soul. Pour each ingredient with care. Stir counter clockwise to slow down time a bit. Savor each bite as its own moment. Best if served over conversation and sharing of memories.”
Guadalís Del Carmen is a Dominican-American playwright and performer. Born and raised in Chicago and based in New York City, Del Carmen’s plays center Afro-Latinx experiences and narratives. Mami’s Recipe Book, a commission of the The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, takes a look into the lives of several neighbors during the Covid-19 pandemic. Carmen, the play’s lead, has recently learned how to cook as guided by her mother’s recipes and spirit and uses her cooking to bring joy into the world.
