On the day I became a U.S. citizen, a childhood friend said something that stayed with me: “You have a 24-year-old story to tell.” I carried that thought with me when I returned to Kenya a few months later, the first time since I left at seven years old.

To grow up in America as a child born in Africa is both a blessing and a burden. The burden, for me, was the distance from family and the experience of living in a place where identities like Gikuyu, Kenyan, and African are often misunderstood. Returning home reminded me that there are places where being Black is neither the heaviest nor the most celebrated part of your identity. It is simply a fact of your existence. This book grew out of that return.

The poems and reflections in these pages trace a journey across three timelines: ten years since I promised myself I would begin healing wounds I did not yet fully understand, twenty-five years since I first arrived in the United States, and sixty-two years since Kenya gained independence, the same year my father was born and a moment that I realized recently shaped the course of my family’s history.

As I prepared to return home, I began uncovering more about that history by learning Gikuyu. Growing up understanding Gikuyu and Kiswahili, even though I don’t apply it as often as I apply English, I knew that languages are a whole world unto themselves. I took an online Gikuyu class in anticipation for my return with the intention of writing about my return in both Gikuyu and English. Once I arrived, I got to experience things I only ever prayed for,  including reconnecting my living maternal grandmother, seeing the grave of my paternal grandmother who I wasn’t able to bury, meeting relatives I hadn’t seen in decades or never met and eventually meeting my only living  grandfather for the first time. All of this was set against Kenya's ancient and yet vibrant ever-evolving culture. My cup overflowed with abundance, both for my soul and for my artistic aspirations. 

 Above all, these pages honor the life I left behind, the stories that continued to unfold while I was away, and the quiet miracle of discovering the truth of my lineage, from the physical place, the traditional culture, and even the family conflicts that led to me being who I am today. In a moment when immigrants are often scapegoated for society’s struggles, I hope this book invites curiosity about the nuanced lives people lived before they arrived somewhere new. We must regard all parts, not in spite of their complexities, but precisely because these complexities are what makes us deeply human and worthy of living, whether we stay home or migrate across the world.