Full Product Details
Author: KÁNYIN Olorunnisola
Publisher: Acre Books
Imprint: Acre Books
Dimensions:
Width: 17.80cm
, Height: 1.00cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.227kg
ISBN: 9781968209001
ISBN 10: 196820900
Pages: 104
Publication Date: 15 March 2026
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Availability: Awaiting stock
Reviews
“‘Let me be whatever I name myself,’ says one or perhaps more than one speaker toward the end of this deeply haunted and haunting book for those ‘who were called aliens in their own home.’ From DC to Oakland to the whole ‘afterlife of America,’ home is an ever-shifting experience, narrated and sung by an unforgettable cast of immigrant voices. The legacies and ongoing violences of colonialism, imperialism, and racism are real—but also real, very real, are the powers of language and love. In these poems love is language, the most inventive and soulful. At the same time, love is reckoning with history and confronting the self/selves. Love is the brilliance of this brilliant poet’s rage: ‘Rage against / the dying of your light & when you are long gone, / I swear this to you: You will live on in my rage.’” * Chen Chen, author of ""Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency"" * “KÁNYIN's poems shimmer with the clay from when we came; they illuminate and yet stalk the shadows they inhabit. They leap from the spotlight of the page to our souls where they stage a sit-in and never leave. The Immigrant Monologues is an endlessly inventive, opulent, masterful, nuanced, and urgent constellation of voices that chorus the songs of our time. Listen, and listen well.” * Inua Ellams, author of ""The Actual"" and ""Barber Shop Chronicles"" * “‘We are all here, and look!’ Radical poems and forms startle in this stunning debut. Like Ntozake Shange’s choreopoems, invented personas take a similar solace in collective moves and memory. Within the poet’s light the Black diaspora is divine; the self contains multitudes. These poems lend fresh eyes to wounds both personal and communal. With this work, Olorunnisola makes his own place within language. He builds himself a forever home.” * Kwoya Fagin Maples, author of ""Long Eye"" *
“‘Let me be whatever I name myself,’ says one or perhaps more than one speaker toward the end of this deeply haunted and haunting book for those ‘who were called aliens in their own home.’ From DC to Oakland to the whole ‘afterlife of America,’ home is an ever-shifting experience, narrated and sung by an unforgettable cast of immigrant voices. The legacies and ongoing violences of colonialism, imperialism, and racism are real—but also real, very real, are the powers of language and love. In these poems love is language, the most inventive and soulful. At the same time, love is reckoning with history and confronting the self/selves. Love is the brilliance of this brilliant poet’s rage: ‘Rage against / the dying of your light & when you are long gone, / I swear this to you: You will live on in my rage.’” * Chen Chen, author of ""Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency"" * “KÁNYIN's poems shimmer with the clay from when we came; they illuminate and yet stalk the shadows they inhabit. They leap from the spotlight of the page to our souls where they stage a sit-in and never leave. The Immigrant Monologues is an endlessly inventive, opulent, masterful, nuanced, and urgent constellation of voices that chorus the songs of our time. Listen, and listen well.” * Inua Ellams, author of ""The Actual"" and ""Barber Shop Chronicles"" * “‘We are all here, and look!’ Radical poems and forms startle in this stunning debut. Like Ntozake Shange’s choreopoems, invented personas take a similar solace in collective moves and memory. Within the poet’s light the Black diaspora is divine; the self contains multitudes. These poems lend fresh eyes to wounds both personal and communal. With this work, Olorunnisola makes his own place within language. He builds himself a forever home.” * Kwoya Fagin Maples, author of ""Long Eye"" * “KÁNYIN has arrived, and in this book, he opens a new door in the rich poetic traditions of Nigeria, one that swings wide toward experiment, polyphony, queerness, and the complexities of diaspora life. In Ará’lúèbó: The Immigrant Monologues, KÁNYIN Olorunnisola walks through that door with clarity and a deft, restless language into a bold new territory. Through choreopoem, monologue, lyric essay, and prayer, these poems travel the fault lines of America and move through Nigeria’s unfinished histories with unsparing intensity. What astonishes me in these poems is KÁNYIN's ability to braid theory and street-speak, archive and nightclub, Yoruba oríkì and ball-culture into one burning voice of survival and praise. Formally wild yet emotionally exact, this book honors the murdered and disappeared even as it revels in the absurd, tender, defiantly queer joys of diaspora life.” * Romeo Oriogun, author of ""The Gathering of Bastards"" *
Author Information
KÁNYIN Olorunnisola is a multidisciplinary experimentalist of Yoruba descent. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Chicago Review of Books, Al Jazeera, FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, and elsewhere. His debut short film, Chiaroscuro, premiered at the 2024 Rising Tide Film Festival. He is the founder of Sprinng Inc., a literary nonprofit, and a former nonfiction editor of the Black Warrior Review. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.kanyinolorunnisola.com.
