Overview

I Have a Home, There Is a We, whose original Swahili edition was in 2015 the first book of poetry to win the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature, brings the acclaimed verse of prolific Zanzibari poet, journalist, and cultural changemaker Mohammed Khelef Ghassani to English-language readers for the first time. The book explores the poet's life as a migrant in Germany: linguistic and cultural alienation, nostalgia, and longing for his homeland on the island of Pemba. These poems form a catalog of sorrow and love addressed to the family he left behind, to the children whose roots ""he tore forcefully from the ground"" in hopes of offering them a better life, and above all to the country he calls home, using the deeply resonant Swahili term ""kwetu""—our place—named over and over again as Zanzibar. Utilizing the structured verse forms of traditional Swahili prosody, the collection is modern, unique, and innovative, speaking to a global diasporic experience even as it draws deeply on an idiom specific to the poet's tiny island home. A ripple of political defiance suffuses the poems as Ghassani positions himself against layered forms of oppression and marginalization both at home and abroad in this synthesis of love song, lamentation, and freedom declaration.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mohammed Khelef Ghassani ,  Meg Arenberg
Publisher:   University of Nebraska Press
Imprint:   University of Nebraska Press
ISBN:  

9781496244284

ISBN 10:   1496244281
Pages:   124
Publication Date:   13 February 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Translator’s Note Author’s Introduction I Have a Home Too Many In the Name of My Country She Is Called Zanzibar The Lord Taketh Receive This Tear I Remember Dream It’s Already in Pieces Your Equal I’m Coming Home I’ve No Choice but to Go It Will End We Have This Tree The Voice of My Country Don’t Make Me an Orphan The Butterfly Fish But She Wasn’t the One We All Have Our End Zenj, My Dear How Can I Stop Crying? My Country Is Bereaved Dreams Fly If Nurturing Is Beyond You Greetings to My Mothers Alhamdulillah What Goes Around Comes If You Knew That I Know Dove, I Blame You Tears, Spill If You Don’t Have It, You Don’t Have It Release Me Wasted Soul A Pot Won’t Lack for Soot These Days I’ve Matured We People of This World When You Fear People You Don’t Act Where Are They? Get Caught and Remember Me The World Isn’t Pleasure Popobawa Has Returned Isolation Cradles Generosity Won’t Be Repaid Little Half My Heart Giving and Receiving Bequest Be Tolerant This Is How I Am When a New Thing Becomes a Wound The Choice That Can’t Be Chosen Life Is Love My Khadhira, Hush Now We Will Arrive How Can You Drink the Sauce First? The Hot Sun of Night Peacock in a Cage There’s No Growing Weary of Getting Love Is in the Tease Shoes Come in Pairs Their Country, Their Tongue Home O Home The Pens Should Roam A Broad-Shouldered Man Don’t Desert Your Camp I Am Yours I Don’t Need a Spectacle Take Advice This Is How They Are The Way I Love You Today’s Eater, What Does He Eat? Had It Been Knowable For Whom Do You Wear It? My Children, Forgive Me I Won’t Blunt My Knife Attacking the Jinni Where Are You, Joy? Some Things You Shouldn’t Ask Judgment of Man If Things Go Bad I’m Afraid of Becoming Lost The Ones Who Search for You Ballot The Bones of the Migrants I Am a Leaf While the Clay Is Wet Building a House from Afar You Are the Ones Who Love Me

Reviews

""The journeys Mohammed Ghassani's poetry beautifully takes raise questions about home: Is it a place that only poetry can find? Is it a road map back home or is poetry itself the destination, our final home? In Meg Arenberg's translation is home to be found in many languages? And for the reader, do you now see you live in many homes? Come to Ghassani's poetry all packed and prepared, with your arms wide open ready to embrace your many selves. Home here is a train traveling faster than the speed of light to all destinations at the same time.""--Mukoma Wa Ngugi, cofounder of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and author of Logotherapy ""This beautiful translation introduces to an English reading audience Mohammed Ghassani's captivating poetry. It is representative of new, young, confident, patriotic, hopeful, and vibrant voices currently emerging out of a long tradition of Kiswahili verse. This is a daring voice very much worth listening to.""--Abdilatif Abdalla, Kenyan political activist, author of Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), and retired teacher of Kiswahili language and African literature at the University of Leipzig

""This beautiful translation introduces to an English reading audience Mohammed Ghassani's captivating poetry. It is representative of new, young, confident, patriotic, hopeful, and vibrant voices currently emerging out of a long tradition of Kiswahili verse. This is a daring voice very much worth listening to.""—Abdilatif Abdalla, Kenyan political activist, author of Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), and retired teacher of Kiswahili language and African literature at the University of Leipzig ""The journeys Mohammed Ghassani's poetry beautifully takes raise questions about home: Is it a place that only poetry can find? Is it a road map back home or is poetry itself the destination, our final home? In Meg Arenberg's translation is home to be found in many languages? And for the reader, do you now see you live in many homes? Come to Ghassani's poetry all packed and prepared, with your arms wide open ready to embrace your many selves. Home here is a train traveling faster than the speed of light to all destinations at the same time.""—Mukoma Wa Ngugi, cofounder of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and author of Logotherapy

Author Information

Mohammed Khelef Ghassani was born in 1977 on the island of Pemba, Zanzibar. He studied translation at the Open University of Tanzania, where he received a master's degree in 2014. He now works as a reporter and editor of the broadcasting company Deutsche Welle in Bonn, Germany. He is the author of seven previous collections of poetry in Swahili. Meg Arenberg is a scholar and translator with specializations in Anglophone African, Indian Ocean, and Swahili literatures. Her work has won recognition from the American Comparative Literature Association and the American Literary Translators Association.

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