Harry Garuba, Associate Professor, African Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa

“In a world where the lurid and dramatic have become the standard fare in representations of Africa, it is refreshing to read poems such as Roselyn Jua’s which depict the continent as a land of ordinary people, living ordinary lives, partaking in the ordinary nostalgias and anxieties, the everyday joys and sorrows that beset ordinary people everywhere in the world. [….]Indeed, in these poems, the speaking voice guides us through a poetic experience that enjoins us to look out for the ‘insignificant’ detail that produces profound insight, to listen for the nuance of language where meaning arises out of paradox, irony, and understatement rather than through the hyperbolic, overladen word. It is only by cultivating a stance of complex looking and listening in this manner that we will come to a deeper appreciation of the fuller import of these poems.”