As Long as Trees Take Root in the Earth - (Africa List) by Alain Mabanckou (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A hopeful, music-infused poetry collection from Congolese poet Alain Mabanckou.

These compelling poems by novelist and essayist Alain Mabanckou conjure nostalgia for an African childhood where the fauna, flora, sounds, and smells evoke snapshots of a life forever gone. Mabanckou's poetry is frank and forthright, urging his compatriots to no longer be held hostage by the civil wars and political upheavals that have ravaged their country and to embrace a new era of self-determination where the village roosters can sing again.

These music-infused texts, beautifully translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson and supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, appear together in English for the first time. In these pages, Mabanckou pays tribute to his beloved mother, as well as to the regenerative power of nature, especially of trees, whose roots are a metaphor for the poet's roots, anchored in the red earth of his birthplace. Mabanckou's yearning for the land of his ancestors is even more poignant because he has been declared persona non grata in his homeland, now called Congo-Brazzaville, due to his biting criticism of the country's regime. Despite these barriers, his poetry exudes hope that nature's resilience will lead humankind on the path to redemption and reconciliation.

Review Quotes

"[Mabanckou] has come to be known as Africa's Samuel Beckett . . . Mabanckou's freewheeling prose marries classical French elegance with Paris slang and a Congolese beat . . . The novel draws on oral lore and parables in its sly critique of those who use traditional beliefs as a pretext for violence."--Praise for "Memoirs of a Porcupine" "The Economist"

"At once charming and disquieting . . . A country's fraught history comes vividly to life through a child's eyes."--Praise for "The Death of Comrade President" "Kirkus Reviews"

"It's a great gift to anglophone readers to have available now the third and fourth of the poem-series that followed Mabanckou's epiphany, as well as the 'Open Letter, ' thanks to Nancy Naomi Carlson and Seagull Books. Mabanckou's craft has no need to vaunt itself. Words are woven with a precision and economy that makes punctuation unnecessary. There is a complex simplicity to these evocative, brief messages from the wanderer, whether he is witnessing the destruction caused by African brothers fighting brothers, or remembering the life of schoolboys."--Kai Maristed "Arts Fuse"

"Much of the poetry in As Long as Trees Take Root in the Earth and Other Poems exhibits a muscular, incantatory power, as if it indeed is pouring forth from its sources, with Mabanckou as the conduit lightly shaping but not taming its flow . . . Nancy Naomi Carlson's sensitive and painstaking translations of this powerful, important writer are a boon to anyone interested in the world of Francophone letters. As in her other work, here Carlson deliberately seeks to mimic the music of the original French in her English renditions of the text."--Katherine E. Young "Los Angeles Review of Books"

"The dense imagery of these poems, which lack titles and punctuation, is rooted in nature, filled with rivers, hills, and lantana fields, while also bearing the imprint of human aggression . . . The poems in this collection expose the high toll of violence in Africa, where wars have 'wounded the ventricles / of the homeland.' At the same time, these poems shine a light on a world that is not so much forgotten as it is displaced, a world in which poetry breathes with life."--Rebecca Ruth Gould "Poetry Foundation"

"Alain Mabanckou a native of the Congo and a longtime professor at UCLA, is one of the world's leading francophone authors. If you're the author of a novel (Verre cassée/Broken Glass) that The Guardian has called one of the best one hundred novels of the century, it may be difficult to be taken as seriously as a poet. And yet Mabanckou has also been publishing books of poems since 1993 . The present edition includes two of his most recent volumes, the first and only translation of any complete poetry books to be published in English. I, for one, am grateful, and I imagine others will be also."-- "World Literature Today"

About the Author

Alain Mabanckou is one of francophone Africa's most prolific contemporary writers. Twice, he has been a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. Born in the Republic of Congo, he is now professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nancy Naomi Carlson is a writer and translator who has published eleven books, most recently An Infusion of Violets, also published by Seagull Books. She is professor of counseling at Walden University.