‘mamaseko

Author: Thabile Makue

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (2020)

Named after the poet’s mother, ‘mamaseko is a collection of introspective lyrics and other poems dealing with the intersections of blood relationships and related identities. Thabile Makue questions what it means to be beings of blood—to relate by blood, to live by blood. In her poems Makue looks for traces of shared trauma and pain and asserts that wounds of the blood are healed by the same.

“The author’s focus on blood as both the root and the salve for violence is an ingenious metaphor employed throughout the book under numerous guises.”

–Veronica Schorr