21st Century African Literature
21st Century Black Immigrant literature
A01=Chisom Okafor
Africa
African immigrants
African Poetry
African Poetry book
African Poetry Book Series
African Poetry collection
Africana studies
Author_Chisom Okafor
Black studies
Category=DC
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
chronic illness
Creative Writing
disability poetics
disability studies
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
health conditions
healthcare
hidden physical illness
Immigrants
Literature
neurodivergent
physical disabilities
Poetry
poetry book
poetry collection
World Literature
Product details
- ISBN 9781496243423
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2025
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The voices in these poems have witnessed the microhistories of the atypical body, the unusual body, the enjambed body, the chronically ill body trying to navigate space and time, love and displacement. The poems are a forcefield for questions that are at once intense and gripping: when we embody life through disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent body-minds, how do we grapple with love, time, and consciousness? How does the chronically ill body navigate the monstrosities of trauma and displacement? The poems not only play around the idea of body-minds but also center on embodiment as touchstones of description. They are alive to history and the way poetry’s memorial practices animate the raw intimacy between the seen and unseen.
The people who populate Chisom Okafor’s Winged Witnesses are broken by numerous afflictions and darknesses, but there is a common companionship that binds them, as in a loop. Their voices call out in the wild and their jaded feet drag through lonely pathways, where wild birds dust-bathe by the wayside. There is trauma in these poems, but also light and salvation, and everything that comes between.
The people who populate Chisom Okafor’s Winged Witnesses are broken by numerous afflictions and darknesses, but there is a common companionship that binds them, as in a loop. Their voices call out in the wild and their jaded feet drag through lonely pathways, where wild birds dust-bathe by the wayside. There is trauma in these poems, but also light and salvation, and everything that comes between.
Chisom Okafor, a Nigerian poet and clinical nutritionist, lives in Tuscaloosa, where he is studying for an MFA in creative writing at the University of Alabama. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, the Raven Review, the Hellebore, North Dakota Quarterly, Salt Hill, Sand Journal, the Account, Rattle, and elsewhere.
