Tsitsi Jaji was born at Nyadire Mission in 1976, and raised in Harare. After completing her A’ levels on scholarship at Arundel she moved to the U.S. to study piano and literature at Oberlin College. She earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell University and is now an assistant professor of English at University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. Many of her poems are inspired by music and the experience of living in the diaspora. In addition to poetry she writes literary criticism, and her scholarly book Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music and Pan-African Solidarity was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. She is also author of a chapbook, “Carnaval,” included in the boxed set Seven New Generation African Poets edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani (Slapering Hol, 2014).

We are proud to present Tsitsi Jaji’s poems. Read them here.