AFRICANAMERICAN'T

If the question is America-and by extension who is and what does it mean to be American? -AFRICANAMERICAN'T offers no answers. The CAN'T in the title suggests impossibility and that is precisely what the book is interested in. Even in the so-called land of opportunity some things remain impossible for its speaker(s). In a way AFRICANAMERICAN'T is a document of attempted refusals: assimilation forgetting and allegiance to any one country. However valid despair might be as a response to the continued failings of his two countries Ayokunle Falomo traverses the distance between betrayal and love in an attempt to find poetry-and perhaps something like hope-in all the places it can't be found.