Described by African scholar and literary critic Chielozona Eze as
"one of the most prolific African poets of the twenty-first
century," Patricia Jabbeh Wesley composed When the Wanderers Come
Home during a four-month visit to her homeland of Liberia in 2013.
She gives powerful voice to the pain and inner turmoil of
a homeland still reconciling itself in the aftermath of
multiple wars and destruction. Wesley, a native
Liberian, calls on deeply rooted African motifs and proverbs,
utilizing the poetics of both the West and Africa to convey her
grief. Autobiographical in nature, the poems highlight the
hardships of a diaspora African and the devastation of a country
and continent struggling to recover. When the Wanderers Come
Home is a woman's story about being an exile, a survivor, and
an outsider in her own country; it is her cry for the Africa that
is being lost in wars across the continent, creating more wanderers
and world citizens.