Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The
Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony asks: Whose testimony is valid? Whose
testimony is worth recording? Osman's speakers, who are almost
always women, assert and reassert in an attempt to establish
authority, often through persistent questioning. Specters of race,
displacement, and colonialism are often present in her work,
providing momentum for speakers to reach beyond their primary,
apparent dimensions and better communicate. The Kitchen-Dweller's
Testimony is about love and longing, divorce, distilled desire, and
all the ways we injure ourselves and one another.