Africanamerican't - Paperback

About Africanamerican't

Africanamerican't by Ayokunle Falomo is a poetry collection that confronts fundamental questions about America and American identity. The title itself signals impossibility—the CAN'T suggesting the limits and barriers that persist even in the so-called land of opportunity.

This paperback poetry collection serves as a document of attempted refusals: refusal of assimilation, refusal of forgetting, and refusal of allegiance to any single country. Falomo traverses the distance between betrayal and love, seeking poetry and hope in spaces where they seem impossible to find.

What This Poetry Book Explores

The collection examines the continued failings of two countries through the speaker's perspective, addressing themes of displacement, identity, and belonging. Rather than providing easy answers to questions about who is American and what it means to be American, the book sits with impossibility and complexity.

Falomo's work acknowledges despair as a valid response to systemic failures while simultaneously reaching for something beyond it. The poetry exists in the tension between refusal and acceptance, between two countries, and between betrayal and love.

Publication Details

Published by Flowersong Press in December 2022, Africanamerican't is available in paperback format. This poetry collection represents an important contribution to contemporary African and African-American literary voices exploring diaspora, identity, and the American experience.

If the question is America—and by extension, who is and what does it mean to be American?—AFRICANAMERICAN'T offers no answers. The CAN'T in the title suggests impossibility and that is precisely what the book is interested in. Even in the so-called land of opportunity, some things remain impossible for its speaker(s). In a way, AFRICANAMERICAN'T is a document of attempted refusals: assimilation, forgetting, and allegiance to any one country. However valid despair might be as a response to the continued failings of his two countries, Ayokunle Falomo traverses the distance between betrayal and love in an attempt to find poetry-and perhaps, something like hope-in all the places it can't be found.