In her dedication Safia Elhillo writes, "The January Children
are the generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where
children were assigned birth years by height, all given the birth
date January 1." What follows is a deeply personal collection of
poems that describe the experience of navigating the
postcolonial world as a stranger in one's own land.The January
Children depicts displacement and longing while also questioning
accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home. The
poems mythologize family histories until they break open,
using them to explore aspects of Sudan's history of colonial
occupation, dictatorship, and diaspora. Several of the poems
speak to the late Egyptian singer Abdelhalim Hafez, who addressed
many of his songs to the asmarani—an Arabic term of endearment for
a brown-skinned or dark-skinned person. Elhillo explores Arabness
and Africanness and the tensions generated by a hyphenated identity
in those two worlds. No longer content to accept manmade borders,
Elhillo navigates a new and reimagined world. Maintaining
a sense of wonder in multiple landscapes and
mindscapes of perpetually shifting values, she leads the
reader through a postcolonial narrative that is equally terrifying
and tender, melancholy and defiant.