Shailja Patel: BWAGAMOYO: The Father (Part II of Migritude)

Bwagamoyo, the second work in the Kenyan poet, playwright, theatre artist, and political activist Shailja Patel’s four-part opus Migritude, charts a voyage from colonial Zanzibar to Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence by way of the male body. Bwagamoyo shows how the architecture of Empire is codified on the bodies of men, and how the stories of our bodies are intimately mirrored in the larger Body Politic, and in our national histories.