When South African poet and statesman Keorapetse Kgositsile (1938-2018) was instructed by senior members of his party, the African National Congress (ANC), to flee the country into exile in 1961, he packed among his meagre valuables a corpus of Tswana literary classics. To him, they enshrined a set of knowledge systems, aesthetics practices, cosmologies and mythologies he could marshal to counter colonial modernity''s anti-Black warfare. As a revolutionary writer, he used the worlds from these classics as basis to assert the existence of other forms of being, knowing, and belonging that were otherwise to the Eurocentric, racist, capitalist, and Christian social orders imposed by colonialism and apartheid. Further, the Tswana literatures that accompanied him into exile were material representations of the values instilled in his formative years, used as bridges to connect politics of the homeplace with those of his unfolding exile travels and writing life.Arriving in the nascent cultural and political ferment of the Black power and Black arts movements (BAM) in the US in 1962, he harnessed that Tswana archive in his five collections of poetry published there with the intent to foster continuities between the African American struggle and those of Black South Africa. His works showed otherworlds rooted in Southern African cosmologies, and constructed poetics of possibilities and politics of solidarities in which may be heard the voices, politics, resistance, and histories of black women. Kgositsile''s position in the African-American 1960s and 1970s cultural and political ferment was critical as his work proposed new radical identities and traditions. This book explores how he used his poetry to articulate solidarity between the anti-apartheid struggle, anti-colonial movements on the continent, and the civil rights and emerging black power movements, and shows how these were in turn adapted and translated by figures such as Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, members of The Last Poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, and 21st century arts collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.

f the Black power and Black arts movements (BAM) in the US in 1962, he harnessed that Tswana archive in his five collections of poetry published there with the intent to foster continuities between the African American struggle and those of Black South Africa. His works showed otherworlds rooted in Southern African cosmologies, and constructed poetics of possibilities and politics of solidarities in which may be heard the voices, politics, resistance, and histories of black women. Kgositsile''s position in the African-American 1960s and 1970s cultural and political ferment was critical as his work proposed new radical identities and traditions. This book explores how he used his poetry to articulate solidarity between the anti-apartheid struggle, anti-colonial movements on the continent, and the civil rights and emerging black power movements, and shows how these were in turn adapted and translated by figures such as Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, members of The Last Poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, and 21st century arts collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.ollective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.f the Black power and Black arts movements (BAM) in the US in 1962, he harnessed that Tswana archive in his five collections of poetry published there with the intent to foster continuities between the African American struggle and those of Black South Africa. His works showed otherworlds rooted in Southern African cosmologies, and constructed poetics of possibilities and politics of solidarities in which may be heard the voices, politics, resistance, and histories of black women. Kgositsile''s position in the African-American 1960s and 1970s cultural and political ferment was critical as his work proposed new radical identities and traditions.

This book explores how he used his poetry to articulate solidarity between the anti-apartheid struggle, anti-colonial movements on the continent, and the civil rights and emerging black power movements, and shows how these were in turn adapted and translated by figures such as Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, members of The Last Poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, and 21st century arts collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.f the Black power and Black arts movements (BAM) in the US in 1962, he harnessed that Tswana archive in his five collections of poetry published there with the intent to foster continuities between the African American struggle and those of Black South Africa. His works showed otherworlds rooted in Southern African cosmologies, and constructed poetics of possibilities and politics of solidarities in which may be heard the voices, politics, resistance, and histories of black women. Kgositsile''s position in the African-American 1960s and 1970s cultural and political ferment was critical as his work proposed new radical identities and traditions. This book explores how he used his poetry to articulate solidarity between the anti-apartheid struggle, anti-colonial movements on the continent, and the civil rights and emerging black power movements, and shows how these were in turn adapted and translated by figures such as Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, members of The Last Poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, and 21st century arts collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.ollective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.ollective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.f the Black power and Black arts movements (BAM) in the US in 1962, he harnessed that Tswana archive in his five collections of poetry published there with the intent to foster continuities between the African American struggle and those of Black South Africa.

His works showed otherworlds rooted in Southern African cosmologies, and constructed poetics of possibilities and politics of solidarities in which may be heard the voices, politics, resistance, and histories of black women. Kgositsile''s position in the African-American 1960s and 1970s cultural and political ferment was critical as his work proposed new radical identities and traditions. This book explores how he used his poetry to articulate solidarity between the anti-apartheid struggle, anti-colonial movements on the continent, and the civil rights and emerging black power movements, and shows how these were in turn adapted and translated by figures such as Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, members of The Last Poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, and 21st century arts collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.ollective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.ry Neal, members of The Last Poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, and 21st century arts collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.ollective Otabenga Jones & Associates, as well as rapper Earl Sweatshirt.